Jaz & Miguel (2 page)

For Miguel Pinto, the African sun had been buried along with his
mother and little sister two years earlier, taken into the ground underneath
the black pall that had covered their mutual coffin—together forever, in heaven
and on earth.

Since then, the beauty he'd once heard in the c
hings
of
glasses and the humming drone of low voices while sipping a Caipirinha
and doing nothing else but talking about girls and parties over at Catz Pyjamas
in Melville with friends, had been replaced by the constant hackle of morbid
memories that clung to his mind like threads of glue-covered gossamer.

And girls? Shit, he hadn't been interested in one in two years. What
for? All they did was giggle and laugh and talk about shit that had nothing to
do with anything but their hair or their asses or their fucking thighs.

Miguel had little interest in these things anymore.

But he knew it went deeper, that it wasn't only to do with the level
of conversation he required, because he'd barely even watched any porn in two
years either! The way he saw it, he figured he'd simply just sunk below the
level of not even wanting to have anything to do with the general subject of
procreation.

What, actually, was the point in forwarding life if it could be
taken away so quickly?

Heaven. Miguel had to believe there was one, and that his mother and
sister were there. He also had to believe that the men who did what they did to
them would be forgiven, because men make mistakes, and hate was a road which
led nowhere. This he had since learned.

It was not how he had felt when he found his sister. No, he had felt
very differently.

He shook the memory from his mind and took another sip of the Pepsi
he'd been holding for the last thirty minutes and which had made his palm numb
and his hand hurt while he stared blankly at some American talk-show where the
host was making oh-so-funny fucking jokes about his president and Jennifer
Lawrence falling at the Oscars and whether or not Lindsay Lohan was really
pregnant.

Twats
.

It always amazed him how much hot air could be expelled from the
lungs of people with nothing greater to worry about than the state of their
shoe shine or what restaurant they were going to eat sushi at that night.

Spend a day in South Africa you idiots, then go back to your
talk-shows and make fun of someone's outfit
.

Miguel was waiting for his dad. It was eight p.m. and dark outside.
He always waited for his dad before leaving the house at night. It's not that
he was particularly worried about him; he just liked to let his dad know that all
was OK before Miguel went out.

And tonight, he
needed
to go out.

He and Sandile had a unique relationship. Miguel didn't know any
other South African whites that were best friends with a black guy, or vice
versa—at least not at their ripe old age of nineteen. Sure he knew plenty of
kids that had been buddies at nine or ten and then, as they grew older and
gained an interest in girls, they found they had different tastes, and then their
musical preferences grew apart, maybe even their taste in movies. And so it had
been that the closest friendships he'd seen of people his age had always been
between ones of the same race.

Sandile and Miguel's friendship had (in the early stages) carried on
longer than most (Miguel surmised) probably because of another common interests
they shared. It's not that Miguel particularly liked
kwaito
music (he didn't; fucking hated the stuff)
or hip hop (well, only a little bit) and especially not (heavens no) the
endless whining of Toni Braxton or Babyface or any of the other "classics"
that Sandile insisted on listening to on one of their many drives down to Durbs
or over to Mozambique. It's not even that Miguel's skin was darker than most
whites' (a pleasant side-effect common amongst the Portuguese whose parents
were from Mozambique, and oh-so-popular with the chicks) because, in all other
respects, he was as Caucasian as they came. It wasn't even their taste in women
(Miguel's eyes always tracking the cliché blonde while Sandile generally went
for what he—equally as cliché—usually called "the epitome of an Ebony
Queen").

No, in the early days, up until they were seventeen or so, their
friendship had been held together by something else, something they'd held in
common since the first day they'd met at Saheti school (not a school either of them
went to, but a school with the most awesome basketball courts in all of
Johannesburg, if not the
world—
not to mention
the babes. Hot, hot babes) where Miguel was shooting hoops at ten years of age
and Sandile had just arrived with his mom (Sandile wearing sneakers that were
just too big for him), also there to play.

So they played together.

And they played every Saturday from there on out.

And his mom and Miguel's mom became friends, too, as they watched
them both from the concrete bleachers.

And then Sandile started going to Miguel's school and they became
friends at school also—best friends. A duo that, more often than not, would
whip yo ass on the courts when challenged. Once or twice they'd played for
money. But competition was always tougher when money was involved and, over the
years, they'd come to accept two distinct disadvantages they had and which they
would never overcome: (one) their height (or, rather, their mutual lack of it) and
(two) Miguel could not (and never would be able to) jump. There'd been a movie
about that once. He hated that movie.

So, whereas at seventeen they had become close, what would keep them
together from there on out would be something else entirely, and it had little
to do with girls or kwaito or movies or LeBron "King" James or the
legend himself (and Miguel's personal favorite) Larry Bird. No, he and Sandile
shared something much deeper now, something no one would ever be able to take
away ... because Sandile's little sister had been Miguel's little sister's best
friend as well.

And she had been playing at their house on that day, too, while Sandile's
mom chatted with Miguel's mom over tea in the lounge.

No, he and Sandile weren't friends, or even best friends anymore—they
were fucking brothers. Brothers in blood. Whereas they had been close before,
that day had solidified a connection between them—of mutual suffering
endured—that soldered them together with an unspoken agreement to be there for
each other into the future and forevermore no matter
what
.

No one would ever tear them apart.

Miguel sipped another bit of Pepsi. The memories were killing him today.

Where
was
his father?

His dad normally arrived at around seven each night. Miguel
sometimes worked late with him but tonight—on the second anniversary of that fateful
day—he just wanted to get out of there. Which is probably why his father wanted
to stay late. Whereas, to escape the memories, Miguel would also escape work,
his father would bury himself deeper in it. In a way, Miguel was
grateful—better to be buried in work than in liquor. He respected his father
for this. He'd seen many a Portuguese man in South Africa turn to the bottle as
a source of hope because of much smaller things, but not Miguel's dad.

He did, however, worry about his father's health. His skin had
yellowed slightly of late, and he wasn't eating much either. Miguel just wanted
to let his dad know that he was still OK. That he wouldn't need to worry about
him. He was just going to go out with Sandile and play some pool.

He heard the door click open and an anvil lifted from his chest, his
legs feeling suddenly weaker.

Thank God.
It was only then that he
realized he'd been silently freaking out, wondering if something had happened
to the old man.

His dad said nothing when he arrived. He never did. Miguel raised
the volume of the TV just to let his father know he was in the TV room—as
always.

Predictability. This was something Miguel had learned was helpful in
getting through these things. If there were no surprises, there would be no
shocks; and every shock was a memory of what had happened before, a memory of
the greatest shock that could have ever been. And so it was that Miguel would
always be here, in the TV room, watching something, waiting for his dad to come
home from work, as his mother had done all those years before, just to let the
old guy know that there was still someone here for him.

"
Miguel, tudo bem?
" his dad asked
as he took off his coat.
Everything OK?

"Sim, pai, e contigo?"
Yes, dad,
and with you?

"All's good with me. You going out with Sandile tonight?"

Hell yeah. Please
. "Yes, shortly."

"You know you don't have to wait for me every night, son, don't
you? You should live your life. I'm fine by myself."

But you are all I have left, papa.
"I
know, dad. I was just watching this show on TV. It's quite interesting."

His dad looked at the TV for a moment, blankly, and Miguel didn't
know if his dad knew he was lying or if his mind had suddenly drifted to
something at work. "Well, OK, son. Say hello to Sandile for me."

Miguel nodded.

His dad went up to bed.

Predictability. Every night the same thing. Sometimes they would
have dinner together, many times not.

Miguel would wait a bit before he left. He would wait for his dad to
fall asleep. He always fell asleep quickly.

It was now eight-fifteen p.m. and Miguel was going silently nuts.
The memories had been hitting him so hard that a sweat had broken on his brow.
The more he tried to forget them, the harder they came at him. He assumed his
father would be asleep by now so, without taking his eyes off the TV—as if
doing so would trigger some alarm within him—he dropped his arm onto the phone on
the side-table by the couch, turned it around, hit
two
for speed dial
(still without looking), and held the phone to his ear.

"Ready?" said Sandile as he answered, already knowing it
was Miguel.

"Ja," said Miguel, his voice croaking.

"
Die Arend
?"

"As always."

Sandile did not sound depressed at all. It's not to say he didn't
think about that day as well; they just dealt better with this kind of stuff (the
Xhosas). Miguel had gone to Sandile's sister and mother's funeral—Lebo had been
his sister's name, short for Lebogang—just as Sandile had gone to Miguel's. But
whereas Miguel's mother's funeral had only left him depressed, Lebo and her
mother's had actually uplifted him.

The traditional Xhosa funeral (the first time Miguel had ever been
to one) was
huge
. It was like the whole friggin
township arrived, with people eating an unspiced cow beforehand, and elders
speaking wise words (which Miguel, unfortunately, did not understand) and then
burying the dead with some food and anything else that could "help them on
their way."

But the clincher had not been the funeral, it had been the
celebration they'd held a year later—
umbuyiso
is what it's called:
an event to celebrate that the deceased had now returned as a true
ancestor, come home to help the living. And during Lebo and her mother's
umbuyiso
,
everyone celebrated.

Miguel had gone to that one as well. He'd never seen people so friggin
happy about someone who had died. He was happy, too. It brought tears to his
eyes.

He wasn't sure if they'd been tears of joy, or sadness for the fact
that he,
too
, wanted his mother and sister to
return as ancestors to watch over him, just as Lebo and her mother would now be
watching over Sandile and his people. It had vaguely crossed his mind that, if
it were true, that his mother's burial had not been done correctly, and that
she and his sister had not been given the sendoff they'd needed so that they
could
come back as ancestors as well.

It worried him.

Miguel later learned that the Xhosa have no word for
depression
.
Instead, they use the phrase
umoya phansi
meaning "low energy of
spirit." It was enough to make the man fucking religious. Not crazy
religious—like, none of that no-sex-before-marriage stuff—but, heck, it was an
eye opener on the subject of life and living and there being a higher power and
stuff. And Miguel figured the higher power wasn't Catholic or Jewish or Muslim
or even a friggin ancestor. Its name wasn't Jehovah or Allah or whatever people
called it. And it wasn't a man or a woman. Miguel just knew—
sensed
—that there must be something more. There just had to be.

Africa had always been special to him. No matter what happened in
it, the sun always rose the next day.

It would rise for him again, he knew it. It would rise for his
mother and his sister again.

He had to believe this.