The Boy Next Door (9 page)

“You know, the one time we were here, we saw that guy, that white guy.”

“Yes,” I say.

“He was really looking at you.”

I don’t say anything.

“Do you know him? I mean, do you talk to him?”

“No.”

“Why do you think he did it?”

“I… I don’t know. But he was cleared, remember?”

“Aren’t you afraid, living next door to him?”

“No, not really. I don’t think about it.”

“It would give me the heebie-jeebies, for real.”

I don’t tell Bridgette that I lie on my bed and imagine him next to me. The two of us, side by side, on my bed.

Day after day
, I keep opening my diary; the pages all flick past, empty. I try to write things, like how I started off in March, when I
was so excited about finally having my own diary. Things about what had happened in school or at youth group. But I’ve stopped
writing because what I want to write now is too big to be safe in there, even if I do have a lock and key. So I just put
X
’s, my secret secret.

The days are long, ugly blanks.

Christmas is very quiet. We don’t get any visitors, and Mummy doesn’t make anything special like she usually does. Maphosa
didn’t have to kill the biggest chicken, and Rosanna didn’t sit outside the kitchen with the chicken in the green zinc tub,
pouring hot water over it until the feathers softened and could be easily plucked from the skin. “Come, Lindiwe, don’t be
so shy; come and help me,” she would tease me, laughing when I ran away. And Mummy didn’t put the chicken on the kitchen table
and experiment with her stuffing. One Christmas, Aunty Gertrude even brought some crackers.

After we come back from the morning church service, Mummy shuts herself up in her room and stays there for the whole day.
Daddy gives me an envelope with thirty dollars inside and goes to the workshop. Rosanna stays in her room. She is seven months
pregnant now. I go to the veranda with a pile of magazines from the Book Exchange, where you can buy secondhand ones from
South Africa for twenty-five cents.

I walk to the gate. But he isn’t anywhere in sight. Because he parks his car at the far side of the house, I don’t even know
if he is around. Maybe he is at Grey’s Inn celebrating with his friends. And then suddenly a thought shoots through me. What
if he has gone back to South Africa? What if he got so angry or he just wanted to be with his family there? I shake my head.
I won’t think about that.

I will be in Form Three this coming year, almost a senior.

Bridgette phoned yesterday and I could hear music in the background. She sounded a bit drunk and later there were funny noises
like she was crying.

She is always trying to get me to go to the late-afternoon sessions at Talk of the Town Nightclub. The only discos that I
go to are the ones organized by the church youth group. Bridgette says that’s so boring, even though she hasn’t been to one.
“For a start,” she says, “there’s no alcohol.”

I’ve told her a little bit more about him. And the last time, when I spoke a bit too freely, she came out with, “You like
him, don’t you?” I laughed and told her not to be stupid. She pinched my arm and said, “Faker.” Then she went on about her
new boyfriends and how good or bad they were. She said that no one had the complete package, so you had to get a bit here,
a bit there.

She didn’t say anything about her problem.

I sit on the veranda trying to get interested in the beauty and fashion pages of
Fair Lady
and
Femina.
And then I go to the problem pages, which are usually entertaining.

But actually, I am waiting for something to happen.

I’m closing the
letter box when a noise makes me jump.

“The postman is making very late deliveries these days.”

Maphosa is standing so close to me that I can feel his breath on my neck. I stand very still, the piece of paper scrunched
up in my hand. The only light comes from the street lamp across the road; it flickers dimly.

I’m supposed to be outside at the back by the kitchen, topping up the dogs’ plates with our bones from dinner. Very soon Mummy
will be calling me for her tea.

“Watch out.”

I move only when I hear him walk away.

I open the note in the bathroom, the door locked. I read it over and over. I trace his words with my finger, and when I come
out, I put them in my diary and lock them inside.

He is standing by the foot of the stairs outside the public library.

“We need to talk,” he says.

As simple as that, as though it has only been a couple of days since we last exchanged a word and not a month almost.

I don’t say anything but walk next to him.

He offers to take my bag, but I shake my head.

Anyone could see us. Daddy who might be out on a call from the exchange. Anyone from school. Mummy who might be doing some
shopping.

We walk down Main Street, then left along Leopold Takawira.

“This will do,” he says.

We go into the Art Gallery. He pays for us both. We go up the stairs and then he starts.

“So what exactly are you playing at, Lindiwe?”

Around us there are stone sculptures. On the walls, batiks.

“Did you hear me, what exactly are you playing at?”

He reaches out, grabs hold of my wrist, pulls me to the window.

“And don’t put on that fucking quiet act. You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

He lets go of my arm.

“I just kept it,” I say.

He leans his hands against the frame of the window. I can hear his breathing. My arm hurts.

He turns, faces me.

“I’m going to tell you something. I’ll say it this one time and it’s finished, all right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not joking. I don’t want to hear anything about it after this.”

He is standing there, his hands crossed on his chest, looking down.

“I didn’t do it,” he says.

That’s all he says.

Walking out of the gallery, I bump into Mrs. Ncube.

“Lindiwe, what are you doing here?”

“I… I’m just researching for school.”

“School these days, too much to learn, my child. That is good. Anyway, tell your mother I will be coming round tomorrow to
discuss the patterns for the costumes.”

“Yes, Mrs. Ncube.”

I see him, between cars, crossing the road, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. When he’s over at the pavement on the other
side, he looks back, and even though he sees me, he walks away.

Bridgette says that
she’s managed to find someone who can take care of her problem. She says if she was still in England this would be no big
deal. Everyone has abortions. There are even advertisements of special clinics, stuck on the walls in the underground where
the trains go through.

Bridgette says the word “abortion” so casually as if it is any other word like
eat, food,
or
run.

Abortion is a sin. It is murder. You are killing a baby.

Bridgette says that this person has experience. She’s done it lots of times. It’s nothing for her and she is not so expensive.

Bridgette’s house girl gave her the name.

“I’m going tomorrow,” Bridgette says. “Will you come with me? The woman is over at Lobengula. She can do it in the afternoon,
after school.”

I say yes.

I am going to help her commit a big sin.

She squeezes my hand.

“Thanks, Lins.”

We walk together after school, all the way across town, zig-zagging up and down the avenues and streets, and first we are
talking about this and that, trying to make each other laugh about things that are happening at school, like how today Michelle
said that she still believes in fairies; but very soon we are quiet.

We hear and feel Lobengula Street before we reach it. African music is on at full blast.

Bridgette keeps looking down at the piece of paper with the address and the diagram. We get lost twice and we have to ask
some pavement vendors the way. I’ve never been to Lobengula by myself and passing all the men standing in corners, making
comments about us, one even grabbing my arm, is not nice.

This is not the exciting and wonderful Lobengula that Daddy takes me to whenever he goes on a Saturday to Old Man Patel to
get his new trousers adjusted. In that Lobengula, Daddy stops in the middle of all the loud music and blaring hooters, greeting
so many people along the shop fronts, sometimes picking up a radio, even a TV set that needs fixing.

Old Mrs. Patel always gives me a brown paper bag sticky and oily with Indian koeksisters, and I marvel at the ripples of her
midriff’s brown flesh, which her sari reveals. Daddy and I wolf down all the koeksisters and wash them down with Fantas from
one of the roadside stalls before we get home; otherwise, Mummy will throw them away because she says that Indians are dirty
and heathens. Old Man Patel is always talking of going back to India even though it’s years and years since he left.

There’s the pitter-patter of little Indian feet running between the counters as some relative or other has come visiting,
and sometimes different ages of Patels are shouting from one end of the shop to the other in an Indian language, while Ndebele
and English are mixed together by the black assistants and customers, adding to the commotion.

Once a customer came in with a baby goat and wanted to exchange the goat for the two costumes that they had put on Lay-By.
Daddy scolded the man for his shortsightedness, saying in his loud lecturing voice that this was the problem with black people.
A goat will be food for time to come. And clothes? They will only get old. People can survive with nakedness, but can they
survive without food? Daddy told the man to think about the welfare of his children. The man said that his wife was wanting
those costumes very bad. Daddy said was he sure it was his wife and not a girlfriend. The man looked down at his feet while
the goat started sniffing some bales of cloth. Finally the man walked out of the shop with his goat. Old Man Patel and Daddy
had laughed and laughed.

But on this day there’s only Bridgette and me, and Lobengula Street is not an adventure.

The place is in a block of flats. I don’t want to go into that dark passage that even from the pavement smells of urine and
vomit. I want to tell Bridgette that we should turn back. We can think of something else, but she steps into the dark and
I follow her.

There’s no lift so we walk up the stairs, all the way to the fourth floor. The stairway is dim, and there are strange banging
and crashing sounds coming from behind doors. On the second floor we hear a man shouting “bitch,” and then the door opens
and the man pushes against me and says “bitch” again; he bangs on the door, tries to open it, but now it’s locked; he shouts
“bitch,” kicks the door with his foot, and then stumbles down the stairs.

I’m scared.

We keep putting our feet into puddles, but I don’t look down.

Finally, we arrive at room 403B.

Bridgette and I stand for a while getting our breath back. There’s still time for us to forget about all this, to be two schoolgirls
again out in the sun, walking on the pavements of Lobengula Street. We can stop at one of the canteens and buy a Coco-Cola
and bun. But Bridgette knocks on the door.

“Who is it?” someone demands. “What have you come for?”

The woman is speaking Ndebele, and I have to translate for Bridgette.

“I’ve come for the special thing. Joyce sent me,” she says to the closed door.

I say it all again in my broken Ndebele.

The woman must be suspicious because she takes some time to open the door.

All we can see is her face, which looks swollen as though someone has beaten her. I hope that she shuts the door again; we
will have to go home. But she opens the door wider and we step inside.

There’s only paraffin light, so everything in the room is shadows: a shadow of a chair, a small table that has some things
on it.

“Which one?” the woman asks.

She’s looking at us like pieces of meat or something like that, something you pick and choose, decide which is good or bad.

“It’s me,” answers Bridgette.

Her voice is so weak, it doesn’t sound like her at all.

The woman flings out her hand. Bridgette takes out her purse and puts the notes in the woman’s hand.

The woman slaps the money on her palm, and then she counts it, licking her fingers between notes. She doesn’t seem too happy,
but she finally shoves them deep into her bra.

She takes a cup from a table. She puts her fingers in it and takes some things out which look like a piece of bark and roots.

“Drink,” she commands Bridgette.

Some of the liquid spills on the table.

Bridgette takes some sips.

“Hurry, hurry,” says the woman. “There are other customers.”

Bridgette takes a long drink, and when she tries to swallow, she starts coughing.

“Take off your skirt and underpants,” says the woman. “Lie down there.”

Bridgette undresses. She goes to lie down on the floor.

I’m holding Bridgette’s skirt and underpants. My hands are shaking. I stand against a wall. I want to stand looking at the
wall. I don’t want to see the woman pick up the knitting needles from the table or to hear Bridgette’s screams.

“Shut up,” says the woman. “Quiet.”

I help Bridgette get dressed. She’s trembling, shivering, and her body is moist. She takes the four Panadols she brought with
her. We walk very slowly down the stairs. All the way to the bus stop, we have to take stops every few steps. I want to tell
her that we should go and confess everything to an adult, even if the woman warned us about telling anyone. “You will go to
jail for many years,” she said.

I help her get up on the bus, sit down. I wait for the bus to leave, looking at Bridgette’s head, which is pressed against
the window. And then I catch my own bus home.

He picks me
up outside Jairos Jiri Crafts Centre. I haven’t seen him for eight days. There was his message in the letter box: “Jairos
Jiri, 2 o’clock.”