The Boy Next Door (26 page)

*    *    *

Rosanna wheels Daddy out into the garden under the gum tree. She sits there with him knitting and chatting about this and
that. From the kitchen window, I watch her put a blanket under his knees and carefully wipe the drool from his lips. I watch
her bend her head towards him to catch whatever words he is struggling with, and I watch her throw her head back in a hearty
laugh.

When I look at her, my half sister, Danielle, I have the feeling of falling through a gap in time and finding myself seven,
eight again. We are Daddy’s girls. She follows me everywhere. I ask Rosanna if it will be all right to tell her that I’m her
sister. Rosanna claps her hands and jumps.

“That is a blessing,” she says.

“I’m your big sister,” I tell Danielle. “We have different mothers but the same father.”

She stands there clasping her hands behind her back.

“I am happy,” she says and I lean over and give her a hug. I look up and see David watching from the doorway.

Rosanna says that Maphosa has been back for a week or so now. He turned up, she says, wearing that uniform. Maphosa is now
a Forward Security guard, and every morning he sets off at five to go off to the patch of field next to Queens Sports Ground
to do his drills and then he walks to Cement Side, where he stands guard over the grocery and butcher shop there. Forward
Security Company is run as a cooperative by former Freedom Fighters. His wife tends the garden. I don’t talk to him during
the three days I’m back. The only time I catch a glimpse of him is when one morning I push back the bedroom curtain and see
him walking towards the gate in his khaki uniform. His figure looks so forlorn in the mist, as though it might be a displaced
spirit, something like that.

Rosanna and I watch the president’s speech on TV. He says that whites in Zimbabwe have never reconciled themselves to the
black majority. They are responsible for the country’s current economic hardships. They control the banks and industry. The
land itself. Even food. He says that government forces have exposed rampant profiteering by milling companies, which are owned
by whites; they are holding back grain to create artificial shortages, selling it off in the black market for exorbitant prices.

Rosanna gets up and says, “This old man is getting more dangerous by the day. He is giving me a headache. Good night, Sisi.”

I switch off the TV and sit for a while in the dark.

Tomorrow we’ll be going back. David and me.

I phone Botswana. The phone rings on and on until finally someone picks it up.

“Hello,” I say. “Hello.”

And I know it’s my mother on the other end.

“Hello, Ma, Mummy.”

And then I hear
click
and the line is dead.

I take Daddy’s hand, hold it in mine. I don’t know if he likes it, wants it there. We are sitting on the veranda. Just the
two of us. I hold him, us, in another life. There he is sitting on that uncomfortable wire chair, tinkering with something,
a broken radio, a TV part, and there I am, on a cushion on the floor, leaning against a pillar reading.
Sue Barton. Nancy Drew. Heidi. Anne of Green Gables.
Now and then the slap of paper as he spreads out and folds his technical diagrams, his eyes poring over the minute details
until they grow tired, and he pushes his glasses onto his forehead and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“This one is a challenge,” he might say to me. “Come and take a look, see how the See-I-Saws in Magwegwe made a complete mess;
I shouldn’t even be wasting my time…” But then he puts his glasses back down and goes on a marathon session until the item
is in good working order.

“Do you want some tea, Daddy?” I might ask him, my eyes swirling with words, images.

And there is Mummy muttering, “What is the point of all this work when your father undercharges all of the time?”

I want to say that I love him, but ever since he has had the stroke, I haven’t been able to talk to him, to sit down with
him and just say things. It’s as if I’m guilty of something, as if I haven’t been a good daughter, as if I don’t think he
has a life anymore.

I tell Rosanna I will be back for Christmas. I give her my phone number in case of any emergency and also that of Aunty Gertrude
in Botswana. I ask about money, and she says that every month she takes Daddy to the pension’s office for his envelope and
that they take his thumbprint.

“Plus, we have the vegetables we are selling,” she says. “It is a good thing we have a borehole. Do not worry, Sisi.”

I bend down and kiss Danielle and taste the salt of her tears. I give her the wool doll I bought at Jairos Jiri Crafts Centre.

“I thank you, my sister,” she says softly.

David stands stiffly at my side. He doesn’t say a word.

The bus moves
swiftly on the deserted road. I look outside and the landscape is bleak. Stunted maize in fields, the earth parched. Just
before we reach Kadoma, a surreal sight, wheelchairs right in the middle of the road so that the bus swerves a bit and stops.
I twist my neck back and see men and women in wheelchairs zigzagging along the road, the rims of their wheels catching the
light. I wonder if it’s some kind of protest since the government has cut welfare payments to the disabled. Then I see their
tin cups and plates. The driver gets out frothing and fuming, threatening to beat up one of the guys who is pushing a wheelchair.
The sound of plates and tins banging on the metal of the wheelchairs fills up the air. I see thin lame legs coated with dust.
The driver gets back in, flings some coins outside, and then we’re off again.

I look up and read kadoma ranch hotel and something in me shifts. I take David’s hand and we go into the hotel, past the curio
shop out to the poolside where we queue up to get our snack. Across the pool I look out and see a table, the table where the
three of us must have sat at over a year ago now. Does David feel the ghost of his presence?

My son eats his chips, his chicken sandwich, drinks his Coke. I watch him do these things. It gives me pleasure to see how
quickly he eats, how much his body has begun to fill in.

I can’t put anything in my mouth.

We go into the curio shop. In a basket by the till, my eyes fall on the jumble of wooden animals Ian must have stopped at,
and an ache spreads inside me as I see his large hand delving in there, choosing, wanting something special for his newly
discovered son. I tell David he can choose something. He looks around. He stops for a while at the assortment of bottle-top
toys. But no, there is nothing he wants, likes.

Home.

I stand inside the doorway and I am suddenly overwhelmed by fear. I’m alone. The thought resonates in the quiet room, and
I almost jump when the phone rings.

It’s Bridgette. How grateful I am to hear her voice.

“So, how did it go?”

“It was fine. We just got in. Everybody’s okay.”

“And David, is he—?”

“He’s here.”

“So I’ll get a chance to play Aunty after all.”

“Thanks, Bridgette.”

“When do you have to go to the bush?”

“In about three weeks. I’ll have to stay for about two, three days.”

“I’m ready and willing.”

*    *    *

I stand over David’s bed watching him sleep. He is so still. So perfect. So unharmed. Despite me. I look for the giraffe.
I cannot find him and somehow this makes me sad.

What is the measure of a life?

A small cardboard box with a wire elephant stuck on the lid, something he might have picked up in a curio shop.

It’s what Ian has left behind in my underwear drawer.

In the box, pictures.

One by one I pick them up.

There he is.

The newborn swaddled in his mother’s arms.

The young infant sitting on a plaid blanket, chewing on a rattle. Black hands holding him at the waist.

The young Boy Scout scrambling up some rocks.

The schoolboy standing in front of Haddon and Sly, chewing on a licorice stick.

And there he is, the teenage Ian standing with a woman who can only be his mother, Sarah Price. She is wearing one of those
cotton Indian dresses and sandals, two loose braids falling over her shoulder, some flowers tucked in them. And I’m startled
by her eyes: Ian’s eyes staring right through the picture to me, holding my gaze, challenging.

And I can see why she would leave a place like Bulawayo, Baysview, why they might be too small for her, why she might run
away with a salesman to Jo’burg.

I pick up the last picture.

That morning in Nyanga; I’m standing in my pyjamas.

I look at it for a long time. I turn it round and there he’s written, “a chick I know,” and that makes me smile.

I put the pictures back inside. I close the box. I trace my finger over the wire elephant and think of him, somewhere out
there, courting danger.

“Howzit,” he says.

And I start to cry.

“Lindiwe, Lindiwe, hey, what’s happening, why…?”

“No, I’m… I’m okay. It’s just… I… I’m being silly… it’s hearing your voice… I… it’s just a shock, a… a good shock… I wasn’t
expecting you to—”

“Things have been hectic here.”

“Ian, I’m… I’m looking at the pictures. Thanks for leaving them here.”

“You’re always going on about pictures, so I thought I may as well. Not the kind you were expecting, huh? Anyways, I thought
I’d give you a bit of history, where I’m coming from.”

“Ian, I—”

“Listen Lindiwe, I was a right asshole. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Ian.”

“I saw a guy getting hacked to death today. Yesterday it was some kid getting necklaced.”

“Ian, I—”

“The thing is, I actually
enjoy
doing this shit. It gives me a hang of a buzz, sick, huh?”

“Why don’t you come home? For a couple of days. David misses you. I… I miss you.”

“How’s he?”

“He’s fine. He’s sleeping. We just got back. Like I said he—”

“Lindiwe, I have to go now, cheers.”

And before I can say anything, he is gone.

The cheetah’s perched
on a rock, looking down at us. I can’t help thinking that she could easily jump over the fence, one, two graceful leaps,
and she would be over at us, having the time of her life. What stops her? The fence must be electrified, but still, it doesn’t
seem too high; nothing that her formidable limbs couldn’t scale. Maybe she’s so well fed she couldn’t be bothered.

We’re at the Lion and Cheetah Park just outside Harare. Bridgette and David are engaged in some conversation over at the other
end, where Tommy the two-hundred-year-old gigantic tortoise is. I suppose she’s telling him some fantastic, made-up folk-tale.
It was Bridgette’s idea that we have a day out. We came in her brand-new silver BMW.

“So business is good,” I said. “Nice car.”

“Yes, business is very good. African women and their hair is a fail-proof enterprise.

I didn’t tell her about what Rachel, a fellow student, told me when she saw me with Bridgette in town some days ago.

“Isn’t that girl Governor You-Know-Who’s girlfriend; the one he’s set up in one of those luxury flats in Fife Avenue? Everyone
says that she’s put a big spell on him, and he doesn’t even mind that she’s Ndebele.”

Bridgette’s flat
is
in Fife Avenue.

On one of the side balconies, there is a sweeping view of central Harare. Inside, it’s all Shona sculptures, wide cream leather
sofas, and gleaming metallic surfaces. There is even a waterfall on one of the verandas. It doesn’t feel as though someone
lives in there that much, and when I opened the monstrosity of a fridge during my first visit, there was only a huge strawberry-and-chocolate
cake and a bottle of champagne.

She showed me where David will sleep. The room is bigger than the two bedrooms in the cottage put together. It has a floor-to-ceiling
window with a small balcony. She must have seen me looking at that, for she said, “I’ll secure it. Lins, there’s an enclosed
playground downstairs and a swimming pool.” She didn’t mention the gym and the tennis courts and the sushi bar.

For the first time I took in how sophisticated she was, with her long extensions parted in the middle and pinned loosely on
her head with tortoiseshell clips, her high polished heels and tight jeans. She looked like a model. In fact, Precious, one
of Bridgette’s friends who was the fashion editor at
Mahogany,
was always trying to convince her to do a spread for the magazine. She was beautiful in the way models are beautiful in magazines,
glossy and flawless. They wouldn’t have to do any retouching. I noticed too that men positively drooled at her, but there
was something about her that kept them back. She was too high-class, too fine, too expensive—no, it was more than that, she
was too much herself, Bridgette, to put up with any riffraff. And maybe they knew she was combustible matter.

Is she really the governor’s mistress? He’s notorious for his brutality; there are rumors of suspected rivals being thrown
out of windows. Surely it isn’t just the material rewards that attract her if all that’s true; maybe she’s doing it just for
the hell of it, Bridgette style. If David is going to stay with her for a couple of days, I have to make sure that her personal
life won’t put him in some kind of danger. What if the governor comes in one night drunk, wanting to be serviced? Maybe he
shouldn’t stay with her, but where else will he go? I could take him with me. That will mean more days missed from school,
and what is he going to be doing deep in the rural areas while I interview cooperative workers? He’ll be stared at, maybe
even laughed at, this boy with his complexion, his blue eyes, his red hair. No, no, it’s best he stays. It will only be for
two days.

“Lins! There you are. We’ve been looking for you. Look, look, up there, those monkeys, they’re stealing bananas right from
people’s hands.”

Bridgette’s pointing excitedly behind me, and I catch the last monkey leaping up the roof of the canteen, joining his mates,
munching away, looking for all the world as though they’re the ones watching the animals in the zoo.