No Turning Back (11 page)

I
f Sipho hadn’t been so tired after his night in the garbage can, he might have lain awake all night, worrying about how to answer the adults’ questions in the morning. Another care worker,
Bra
Elias, gave him the bed above Jabu. It was the first time he had slept so high up, and he would probably also have worried about rolling off in his sleep. For a little while he lay curled up tightly under his cover, aware of the strangeness of the bed and the darkened shelter full of other
malunde.
He had been so absorbed in thinking about his problems that he hadn’t begun to talk properly with any of them yet, even when they had been eating their meal together. It helped knowing that Jabu was underneath him now. After
Bra
Elias turned off the light, there was silence inside the shelter. From outside came the constant rumble of traffic and an eerie glow through the windows, which didn’t have curtains. A cold draft was blowing through a broken pane of glass near him. Sipho tugged
his cover even more closely around him, and before long he was taken over by heavy sleep.

In the morning when Jabu and the others left for school, Sipho remained behind with Sis Pauline to wait for the shelter manager. He was nervous and still unsure of what he would say, even as Brother Zack walked in. A broad smile lifted the manager’s cheeks as he greeted them. Tall and thin, he was about the same height and age as Sipho’s stepfather, but his voice couldn’t have been more different. Like Sis Pauline’s, his way of speaking was quiet and friendly. Sitting at the table, Sipho forced himself to glance across into each adult’s eyes before making his decision.

Yes, all right. He would trust them. He would tell them everything and let them go and tell his mother that he was safe. Then they could come back and tell him how his mother was…and whether the baby had come…and whether he had a little brother or a sister. But they would have to explain to his mother that he couldn’t ever live with his stepfather. He would just run away again if they forced him.

Once his mind was made up, Sipho found he could answer their questions. He even told them about taking the money from Ma’s purse. At the time he had been so angry he hadn’t cared about Ma being upset and worried about him disappearing. Now he understood that she couldn’t have
stopped his stepfather. It wasn’t her fault…and he wanted to say he was sorry to her—but never, ever, to
him.

“I’m very proud of you, Sipho. It’s hard to say these things.”

When Sis Pauline congratulated him, he felt good. Brother Zack explained that he or one of the care workers would visit Sipho’s mother. He understood Sipho’s feelings about his stepfather. Nothing, he promised, would be decided until they had the full picture. Sometimes people and situations changed. For some children it was possible to go back home and for others not. In the meantime Sipho was welcome to stay at the shelter as long as he kept to the rules.

“Have you taken
iglue?”
asked Brother Zack.

“No, sir…”

The words were out of his mouth as quick as water from a tap. Then he hesitated. Could he not be honest?

“Only one or two times, sir…when it was very cold.” Brother Zack frowned a little but without looking angry.

“Well, we don’t allow it. All the boys here know that. And of course we want you to go to school.”

Sipho would go to the shelter’s own school at first. The teachers there would help him catch up with his work until he was ready for another
school. Sipho didn’t say anything. He had hated his school in the township. When he couldn’t follow what the teacher was saying there, he got into trouble. Worrying so much about being sent home, he hadn’t thought to ask Jabu about the school.

There was also something else for Sipho to think about.

“Do you want us to let Mr. Danny know that you are here with us? He could be worried about you.” Sis Pauline’s voice was calm.

“No, he doesn’t care.”

Rushing the words, he felt a sudden dash of anger.

“You can’t be sure, Sipho. Some people don’t always show their true feelings. We can just tell him you’re safe. You don’t need to see him.”

Sipho shrugged, as if to let what she was saying pass. Let them tell Mr. Danny if they wanted to. He was never going back there. At least if they told him, Judy would find out too. He expected that she and Mama Ada would want to know that he was all right.

When their discussion was over, Sis Pauline helped Sipho choose some clothes from a cupboard and showed him a metal tub and soap for washing his dirty clothes. She also pointed out an ironing board and iron, which he hadn’t noticed before.

“Everyone must look after their own clothes. Even if clothes are old they can still be smart,” she said, her eyes wrinkling with a smile.

Later, bending over the tub and scrubbing the dirt from his jeans, Sipho pictured Gogo and then Ma doing the same job he was doing now. Their hands and arms covered with soapsuds, their faces shining with sweat. They had always washed his clothes. Even at Mr. Danny’s, Mama Ada had done it for him. This was the first time he was doing it himself. Hanging the dripping clothes on the line outside the shelter, he felt a little bit proud of his work. What would Ma think if she could see him now?

In the middle of the afternoon, like the day before, the quiet of the shelter was broken when Jabu and the other boys returned from the school. But this time, Sipho took more in. There were quite a few faces he had seen before in the video games shop. Some children were smaller than him, and others looked much older. This was the group that went to the shelter school, explained Jabu. The boys who came in a little later, wearing gray trousers and maroon or black blazers, were those attending schools in the city or Soweto.

A boy with closely cropped hair called out to Jabu. “Does your friend want to play?”

He was holding up a pack of cards. Sipho
wondered if his head had been shaved like Joseph’s. Jabu looked at Sipho, and they joined the cardplayers at the table. With the television blaring out loudly behind them, Sipho turned his chair sideways so from time to time he could glance at the screen. Some boys were playing with a ball in the middle of the room, while a couple of the older ones had set up desks for themselves by pulling tables in between the beds. Somehow they were managing to work despite all the noise. The night before, Sis Pauline and
Bra
Elias had insisted on a quiet time for homework after they had eaten. These students must have a lot to do if that time wasn’t enough.

“Do the teachers shout at you at this school?” Sipho asked, as Jabu dealt the cards.

The boy with the nearly shaved head answered first. “Today I was looking out of the window and Mr. Peters shouted at me because I wasn’t working.”

“But they help you more. There are not so many children here,” said Jabu.

In the morning Sipho was taken in a van with the others to an old house in a nearby suburb. There was no sign saying it was a school.
Bra
Elias took Sipho to the office. The head teacher, a small man with bright, dancing eyes, shook Sipho’s hand before asking him to sit down. “I’m
Mr. Masango. I don’t know why, but everyone just calls me Mr. M.! Hehe!”

He chuckled, as if this was a special joke, before beginning his questions. Had Sipho been to school before? Where was his school? What standards did he pass? What was his best subject? With each new question, Sipho’s stomach became tighter and his voice smaller and fainter. He couldn’t tell this head teacher that he didn’t have a “best subject.” Or that school to him meant being hit and called “stupid.” Then suddenly Mr. M. jumped up from his chair and asked Sipho to come with him. It was like trying to follow a rock rabbit! Mr. M. darted up the stairs with Sipho struggling to keep up with him.

Flinging open a door, the head teacher signaled for Sipho to step inside. Eyes down, Sipho entered the room.

“Teacher Lindi, here is your new student. His name is Sipho, and I know he is going to be a star!”

There was laughter. But it didn’t sound unkind.

“Hello, Sipho. Have you any friends here?” asked the teacher.

Her voice was firm but welcoming. Sipho looked up, and there was Jabu! There were only four others. In his township class he had been one of seventy!

“Yes, Teacher. He’s my friend,” he whispered, pointing at Jabu.

“Then you can sit next to him. So long as you work hard and don’t chat all day!”

“Oh, I’m sure they won’t do that, Teacher Lindi!” Mr. M. announced as if he was talking to a large crowd. “I know all you boys are going to work hard and be superstars!”

Again there were smiles and giggles as he slipped out of the room. Is this really a school? thought Sipho.

M
any things were new and strange to Sipho at the shelter school. Like lessons in “Drama,” where Teacher Lindi asked him to imagine someone who was lonely and make up a scene about it with the other boys. Like a teacher sitting next to him and talking with him when he had a problem with his work. Like Teacher Joe, who was white, with long reddish hair hanging from the back of his head like a horse’s tail. His pink face was covered in little brown dots, and he wore bright shirts. At the end of Sipho’s first art lesson, Teacher Joe praised Sipho’s painting.

“I like the way you use your colors, Sipho. They’re bold and strong. That’s good!”

But Sipho felt wary. Teacher Joe seemed friendly, but so had Mr. Danny.

Soon Sipho found he was beginning to enjoy some lessons. Even math and English weren’t so bad. In fact, sometimes the subjects were all mixed up. He especially liked the work for the
Peace Day that Teacher Lindi had told them about. They were using a sewing machine to make a banner. Having measured and cut out the letters for the word PEACE from some blue material, they were stitching them onto a long strip of white. Sipho was asked to trace a picture of a dove so they could have it flying on the banner. There were also songs to learn. While some of the English words were difficult, others made sense to him:

Sister, brother,

Mamma, daddy,

Stop killing one another

Bring peace in our Land.

Teacher Lindi joined in the singing. Her voice seemed to come from deep inside her, encouraging them to sing more loudly. Her slim black braids, pulled back together into a thick bunch, swung as she moved with the music. On the following Sunday, thousands of children were going to join hands in one enormous circle around the city center to sing their Peace Song. Then they would go in buses to a very big meeting especially for children.

“Is it for all children, Teacher?” asked Jabu.

“Do you mean is it for black and white?”

Jabu nodded.

“It is,” replied Teacher Lindi. “Look how the song says ‘Let’s bury our differences and live in harmony.’ That means we must learn to live together in peace.”

Yes, thought Sipho. But who would listen to children singing a song?

Of all his lessons, Sipho soon found he was looking forward most of all to art. Teacher Joe said they should make pictures of a time when they had felt really sad or happy or angry or frightened or whatever else. He said a picture could show how someone felt without any words. Most times, Sipho would sit at the table thinking, and then the picture would just come to him. First he drew himself hiding in the garbage can and the man with the broken bottle standing over him. He made himself very small and the man very big. Then he made a picture of himself playing with his puppy in Gogo’s yard. The puppy’s tail stuck straight up in the air! He painted the gang eating Vusi’s sausages around the fire at the
pozzie.

When Jabu looked at this picture, he laughed at the way Sipho had given each
malunde
a round, fat stomach to show how they enjoyed their meal! But another picture showed
malunde
tightly packed inside the back of a
gumba-gumba,
holding on to each other. He made black dots to show tears dripping out of their eyes.

There were two things, however, which Sipho
found it hard to bring himself to draw. Anything that had to do with his mother was still too upsetting. The other had to do with Mr. Danny. There were so many different sides to Mr. Danny, and Sipho’s feelings about him and his family were so mixed up, it was too confusing. In the end Teacher Joe helped with a suggestion.

“When you don’t know what to do, stop thinking so much. Just let your hand draw whatever it wants. It’ll know what to do!”

Giving Sipho a large piece of paper, he told him he could put a lot of different pictures and ideas on it.

Sipho began drawing in the top left-hand corner and then adding more drawings around the page, but leaving it blank in the middle. He drew himself cozy in bed, Copper the dog nuzzling his hand, himself playing cards with Judy and Portia, Mama Ada carrying a plate of sizzling chicken. Then he drew a tall man with a mustache pointing a finger at a little figure with a broom. Another drawing showed Mr. Danny pointing to a big clock and himself holding up T-shirts to people passing by. The pockets of his trousers were hanging out to show he had no money. Another picture showed two boys facing each other. The boy David had sharp, hateful lines coming out of his eyes, and out of his mouth came the word THIEF.

When the page was filled up except for the space in the middle, he suddenly knew what to do. First he drew a large metal gate. On one side he drew a house and on the other side a long road. Then he drew two boys looking at each other, one on each side of the gate. Their eyes were large and sad. Under the boy by the house he wrote SIPHO, and under the other he wrote JABU. Teacher Joe came to look.

“Mmmmm,” he said, staring at the picture for quite a long time. “You have said a lot in this, Sipho. Well done.”

It was a couple of weeks after Sipho’s arrival at the shelter that Brother Zack called him aside. The lines on his forehead seemed deeper than usual, and his eyes were grave. He had gone to look for Sipho’s mother, using the directions Sipho had given him. But instead of the rows of homemade shacks that Sipho had described, he had found a wide stretch of rubble and ash.

He had gone to the nearest house. The people there told him that there had been fighting after someone from the men’s hostel had been stabbed. The hostel dwellers believed the murderer came from the shacks and had set out to take their revenge with fire. The police were called, but it was the usual story. Taking their time, they came too late to stop the men from
the hostels. The fire spread so quickly that people had run from their homes with only time to save themselves. Later some of them had returned to collect whatever hadn’t been eaten up by the fire.

Sipho’s mouth felt dry. He couldn’t speak. His mind was exploding. He could see fire licking up the curtains by Ma’s bed, flaring over the bedcovers, curling around his mattress, the cardboard boxes, the table…Smoke billowing out so you couldn’t see anything anymore. But where in all this was Ma? Had she got off her bed in time? Or was she moving so heavily that she couldn’t get to the door? Or had she stopped to grab out of the flames a small, crying bundle wrapped in a shawl?

“I feel sure your mother will be all right.” Brother Zack was talking, but his words hardly made sense. “They told me that many people escaped the fire.”

Sipho forced himself to speak. “But where did they go?”

“That’s what I shall find out, Sipho. Don’t be too worried. We are going to find your mother.”

Putting his arm around Sipho, Brother Zack held him firmly for a few seconds and then asked Sipho to think if there were any relatives or friends who might have helped his mother. He would go and see them and he would also
contact priests and other people who worked in the community. Someone was bound to know.

That evening Sipho didn’t want to eat. After Brother Zack had spoken to him, he lay on his bed and refused to come down. He didn’t even want to talk to Jabu. The next day was Saturday, and although Sipho did his share of the chores, he again refused to join in the activities. The others were going to play soccer against a team from a school in the suburbs. They were going to be taken in that school’s bus to their soccer field. Sipho had heard the talk about the enormous fields belonging to the school and how the students there even had their own sports center. In the township they played soccer in the road.

Jabu tried to persuade him.

“Come on,
buti!
You’ll feel better when you get out.”

But Sipho was adamant. He was not going anywhere. In the end, Sis Pauline agreed that he could stay behind.

“I’m going to make some badges for the Peace Day tomorrow. You’ll help me, won’t you, Sipho?” she said.

He didn’t say anything. It would be hard to say no to Sis Pauline.

But the Peace Day and the rally no longer attracted him. He had thought it would be good, singing with lots of other young people in the
streets. Now he was confused. Peace was good. Yes, he wanted peace. But when he thought about the men from the hostel setting fire to Ma’s home, he felt so angry. Like he was burning inside himself. Ma had never hurt them. Why shouldn’t their homes be burned down as well? Another wild thought had also crept into his head. If his stepfather had been caught inside the burning shack instead of his mother, then he wouldn’t be upset.

Sitting next to Sis Pauline, Sipho helped her cut the white and blue ribbons before twisting and pinning them together. She let him work in silence. He liked her for that. Afterward he helped her make sandwiches, which she said they would take with them to eat during the rally. Sis Pauline seemed to think of everything. Perhaps he would just go with everyone else, but no one…no one could force him to sing.