Ishmael Toffee (6 page)

“We’re closed,” a voice shouts from inside.

“Emergency,” Ishmael says. “Emergency for Missus Appolis.”

The door opens a crack and the uniformed man stares out. “What emergency?”

Ishmael lifts the girly’s cap so the man can see the kid’s white face. Gets him opening the door.

“What’s that whitey doing here?”

“Call Missus Appolis.”

The guard and a woman behind a desk—busy switching off her computer and gathering her purse—mutter and then the woman crosses and opens an office door, says something and after a while Missus Appolis comes out, all dollied up with her make-up and her high heels.

“Yes?” she says.

“I’m Ishmael Toffee,” he says.

She’s looking at the girly. “What’s that boy doing here?”

“Please, missus,” he says. “Can we talk inside?”

The woman nods and lets them walk into her office.

“This is a girly,” Ishmael says, lifting the cap off the child’s blonde hair.

Missus Appolis checks out the kid, then nods.

“She come from the house where I work in the garden.”

The woman looks worried. “What are you doing here with her, Ishmael?”

Ishmael puts a hand on the girly’s shoulder and says, “Her daddy’s doing things to her. Bad things. So I bring her here.”

The social worker stares at him. “You’ve kidnapped this child?”

“No, missus. I just bring her here. For help.”

“You wait outside, Ishmael. Leave the child with me.”

Ishmael’s heading to the door when he feels the girly gripping his hand, tight. “Don’t leave me, Ishmael.”

The woman says, “Okay, take her with you then. Wait outside while I phone a doctor who handles these cases. Shut the door.”

Ishmael nods. This is good. This is getting things sorted out.

Holding the girly’s hand he leads her out. As he closes the door a train thunders by, rattling the window glass and the tea things on the desk.

In the sudden silence when the train has passed he hears Missus Appolis talking loud from inside, still shouting over the noise. And he can clear as a bell hear it’s no doctor she’s talking to. It’s the cops. Telling them he is here with a stolen white child.

Ishmael grabs the kid’s hand and hurries to the exit, just as Missus Appolis shouts something from her office. When the guard, a thin thing with pimples, tries to get in their way Ishmael knees him in the privates and he folds, sucking in his breath. Ishmael gets the door open and gripping the girly’s hand tight, hurries her out into the dust, the low sun leaving their shadows long and black on the sand.

They run to a taxi rank, getting lost in the crowd. When Ishmael slows, the kid is panting and his heart goes out to her.

“Ishmael, I think I’ll die if I don’t drink something,” the child says.

They push through the people and Ishmael sees a
KFC with a pointy roof, the red sign like a streak of blood in the darkening sky. He’s got no money, spent his last cents on the taxis.

He sees a young guy in a car with mag wheels and all the trimmings, slumped low, listening to music as he eats chicken and drinks from a liter plastic Coke bottle. The guy throws his box and the empty bottle out the window, starts the car and puts foot, tires screaming.

Ishmael is over to that Coke bottle, grabbing it before a one-eyed woman with a swollen face can get to it. Grabs the white and red striped box, too, almost out of the woman’s filthy hands. Growls at her when she tries to argue.

When Ishmael turns the kid is gone and he panics a moment before he spots her standing up by the door of the KFC staring at the TV that’s stuck to the wall.

“That’s Daddy,” the kid says, pointing her finger at the TV.

The door of the KFC is open and Ishmael can hear the news broadcast, hear the white man standing outside the big house telling how his child is gone.

“And that’s me.” The child says as her smiling face comes up on the screen.

The photo of the kid disappears and Ishmael sees his own mug shots, all gang chops and dead eyes—making him look like the worst thing ever born out of the Cape Flats. Then the white man is back, saying how Ishmael kidnapped his child. The father’s got tears in his eyes, begging people to help him, offering two hundred and fifty thousand for any information that gets his little girl home safe.

Ishmael grabs the kid’s hand and he’s running again, dragging her with him, not hearing her moans and groans. His ears are still full of the white man’s voice. A quarter of a million.

Jesus Christ, everybody on the Flats is gonna want a piece of that, and your ass, Ishmael my buddy, is gonna be fucken grass.

18

The TV people have packed up their bright lights and cameras and gone, and the journalists and photographers—with their shouted questions and flashbulbs—have sped away in their fancy cars. Most of the police have gone too. Just a few in uniform walking around the garden with dogs, and a Boer in a cheap suit who sits in the living room talking to Mr. Goddard.

“We’ve had a tip off,” the cop says. “Cindy and this man Toffee were seen in Paradise Park, in the last hour.”

“Where’s Paradise Park?” Mr. Goddard asks.

“Out on the Cape Flats. Not a good place. But we’re sending in reinforcements and a helicopter. We’ll find her.”

“This is a nightmare,” Mr. Goddard says.

“At least we know where they are. And that she’s alive.”

Earlier the Boer asked Florence endless questions and she answered the best she could. Taking him over every blessed detail of the day, until her head was spinning, then the cop shrugged her away like she was nothing and went off into the house to talk loud on his cell phone.

She hears him now, saying to Mr. Goddard, “We’re monitoring your landline. And your service provider has given us surveillance access to your cell. If Toffee calls you keep him talking for as long as you can, do you understand?”

Mr. Goddard mutters something and comes into the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water from the faucet, drinking it down in one gulp, wiping his hand across his mouth. He looks tired and old, suddenly.

The Boer cop and a colored in uniform stand in the yard outside the kitchen window, talking in Afrikaans, the radio of their car popping and crackling, words coming out jumbled and impossible to hear.

Mr. Goddard comes up close to Florence, talking softly.

“I want the thing you took,” he says.

“What thing?”

“Cindy’s underwear.”

She stares at him.

“Go and fetch it now or I’ll tell them,” nods at the cops outside the window, “that you were involved.
That you helped that man.”
Staring at her. “They suspect you, but I told them how loyal you’ve been. How much Cindy loves you.” He smiles, but there’s nothing nice in it. “One word from me and they’ll lock you up, believe me.”

She knows it’s true, but for a mad moment thinks of getting those panties and showing them to the cops. Then she understands that it’ll never work. John Goddard had played his part of the suffering father all too well.

“I’m waiting,” he says and goes back to the living room.

As Florence walks leaves the kitchen and crosses the garden toward the wall where she hid the panties, she hears the cops talking beside their car, the babble of their radio following her into the night.

19

The girly lies sleeping tight against Ishmael, her breath on his face, her fingers gripping his hand. He can feel her heart beating against his chest as he sits in the dark on the floor of a broken down house built right beneath the dump, the stink coming in thick on the night breeze.

There was still some light when they came on the house—carrying the scraps of chicken in the box and the Coke bottle filled with water from a faucet in a yard—and Ishmael saw the broken windows and the kicked in doors. Surprised at first that no homeless people were living there, until he spotted the gang tags. Didn’t need to read to understand them. Gang called The Americans. His enemy for as long as he can remember. Killed too many to count in Pollsmoor Prison.

When he saw the meth pipes and the empty drink bottles he knew this is where they came, the gangsters, to smoke their drugs and rape females. He done it too, when he was a youngster. The homeless too shit-scared to come near, get their asses dead.

Ishmael reckons they’ve got a few hours, him and the kid. Tells himself the gangsters will be busy now, that they’ll only come here late—past midnight. Pushes any doubts from his mind.

Ishmael needs to piss and he slowly works his fingers loose from the kid’s. The girly says
uh, uh
in her sleep, but he gets himself free and he crosses to the door and does his business, staring out into the night.

He knows he can’t just hide his ass here. He has to do something. Not used to this—having to make a decision. Years in prison take that away from a man: how to make up his mind. Always some fucker in a uniform ready to do that for you, all you gotta do is listen. And in the cells it’s the big men in the gangs coming with the orders.

But, looking over at the sleeping child, knows he’s got to get her out of here. Somehow.

As Ishmael crosses the room he sees a thin piece of glass like a blade lying on the floor, catching the spill of orange light from the big towers Tin Town side. He grabs the glass and goes back to where the kid lies. He found a stub of a candle earlier—put it in his pocket—and he fires it up now, knowing he’s taking a chance. But he needs some light for what he’s going to do.

Ishmael uses his shirt and tries his best to scrub away the dirt—and something thick and dark he doesn’t care to name—from the glass. When it is as clean as he can get it, he gently shakes the child’s shoulder.

“Missy?” She grunts but sleeps on. “Cindy!”

Now she opens her eyes and he sees the fear in them until she recognizes him. “Ishmael.” She sits up, blinking. Stares at the dirty room. “Where are we?”

“It’s okay. We just visiting.”

She wipes at her eyes and her long white hair frames her face. Ishmael takes a handful of the hair and lifts it. She says, “Uh, uh,” and shakes her head, pulling the hair from his hand. Grumpy like an old lady.

“Cindy, I gotta cut it. The hair.”

“Why?”

“Because people gonna see it. There’s nobody out here with hair looks like that.”

“And if they see it, they’re going to catch us?”

“Ja.”

“And take me back to daddy?”

“If they catch us, yes.”

She looks at him and nods. “Okay, then I’ll sit still. I promise.”

And she does, not moving as Ishmael saws away at the hair with the broken glass, blonde curls falling onto her shoulders and onto the floor beside her. He hacks at the long hair, until in some places her scalp shows through pink where he’s gone too close. By the time he’s done it’s a short as a boy’s, and her head looks small and soft on her skinny white neck.

She picks up a curl of hair and holds it to the candle. “It’s like my mommy’s.”

“It’ll grow back.”

“I know.”

But she’s crying for the first time today, and a big tear runs down her face and hangs there forever before it falls and hits the filthy floor.

Ishmael drops the glass and sits beside her on the hair lying like freshly cut straw, and she grabs him and holds him, bawling. He’s surprised at how strong she is,
as if she’s hanging on for dear life.

Then Ishmael hears the loud car with its banging music, hears the fire works popping of the exhausts as it comes on. The car is close now and he catches the beat of the bass bins, not a song as he would call it, more like a
fuck you
. A challenge.

And he knows it’s them. The Americans.

He smothers the candle and by the time the engine and the music cuts he’s moving fast, carrying the kid, saying, “Ssshhh, quiet now,” into her ear, hustling his ass through the empty kitchen to where the back door was. Gone now, chopped up for firewood, just a barred safety gate in the doorway.

Ishmael pushes at the gate and it doesn’t budge. Hinges rusted. Pushes again. Nothing. They are trapped and he curses himself for not seeing this earlier.

Fucken idiot.

The only two windows are high up like in a prison cell, and too small for him—or even the kid—to get through.

 “Poof, Ishmael, it’s smelly,” the girly says.

“Sshhh, Cindy,” he whispers as he puts the child down. “You walk behind me now, see?”

Ishmael leads her back to the front room where he can already see car
headlights throwing men’s shadows black as bats up against the broken window glass
.

20

Footsteps coming up toward the front door. Young men laughing, and a girl too, giggling all high pitched. Ishmael wonders if she knows she’s gonna get dipped and ripped. Maybe she wants it.

The only way out is through the window with the broken glass in it. Glass enough to cut a man bad.

 Not even thinking now, Ishmael pulls his T-shirt out his jeans and holds the child against his body, covering her best he can with the shirt. She fights and wiggles like a cat and cries like one, too.

Ishmael grips her to his chest and runs at the window hitting it with his shoulder and feeling the broken glass give way, some of it slicing him on the face and the head. But they’re through, landing hard on the dry sand.

The wind is knocked out of Ishmael and he rolls, protecting the girly with his body, expecting a bullet anytime.

Ishmael jumps to his feet like his legs are springs and, holding the kid who still struggles to get free, he runs toward the dump rising away like a hillside in the wash of streetlight.

Voices shouting after him: “Stop! Stop fucker!”

As he hits the slope he hears a whine and a pop and something sings past his head. Gets his short legs pumping even faster, powering his way on up into the darkness.

Ishmael slows as the slope gets steeper and the junk under his feet gets softer, him sinking to his knees, having to lift each foot high like he seen them do in the snow on TV. He can hear men behind him, getting closer.
The kid weighs a bloody ton now and that’s the God’s-honest truth.