The Water Man's Daughter (12 page)

She patrolled the streets every day. She saw these tsotsis, gangsters, slouched against corner store walls, smoking awkwardly rolled cigarettes and ganja. They spoke in tsotsitaal, a bastard Afrikaans that is incomprehensible even when it is heard at a normal volume. Usually Zembe heard their slurs only in screams that followed her as she drove. She didn’t know these boys by name, but she knew their mothers. They talked to one another at the windows of the nearest spaza. They complained about their sons who stole food in the middle of the night but wouldn’t come in to sit for a family meal. Kids who took money from their mothers’ purses, even though they could see that their families were struggling.

In the same breath, the women told stories about their sons as babies, how curious they were, how active and strong. They carried pictures of young, smiling boys, the images creased from folding and refolding.

Outside the office, Zembe heard a racket. A girl’s voice called the boy’s name out over and over again. “Mira. Mira!” She screamed as only teenage girls can scream. “Leave him alone!” There was a scuffle. The door rattled, officers tried to hold the girl back, but she made it anyway and flung herself through the door into the small room.

Mira looked shocked. The sneer, the slouch, gone. He ran to the girl, surprising Zembe into releasing her grip on him.

“Sisi,” he whispered fiercely. “Get out of here.”

Nomsulwa ignored him. She marched up to Zembe, thrusting aside the other officers’ attempts to gently restrain her. She was so small, so slight, the adults in the room were scared they would break her if they grabbed too hard.

“It was me. Leave him alone.”

Zembe was surprised and smiled despite herself at the gall of this small thing. She really thought that the police would believe a skinny girl overturned the entire fruit cart, launched it off the platform in the market, and took off with a bag of fruit? All by herself? The boy she was standing in front of was a well-known runner, moving up in the township world, friends with boys who were older and stole things much more valuable than some mangoes from a cart.

Mira held Nomsulwa by the shoulders and turned her to face him. He shook her, whispering the entire time as if the secret could stay between them. “Thula wena. Voetsek. Hamba manje! Hamba!”

“I won’t go. I won’t go. I won’t let you go to jail.” Nomsulwa slammed small fists into the boy’s chest. She
cried, big open tears. She was obviously terrified. Mira closed her into his long arms. He held her while she shuddered. They seemed completely unaware of the audience of officers gathered around them. The men were hanging back, letting Zembe lead the way. Even though they were all the same rank, it was her collar and, besides, crying children are women’s business.

That night, after cajoling the fruit stand owner into dropping the charges and accepting instead a month’s work from the boy, Zembe knocked on Nomsulwa’s door. An older woman answered, eyes tired and hands thin.

“Mama Sithu. We need to talk about Nomsulwa and Mira.”

Zembe explained, frankly, to the woman in front of her about the crowd her daughter was running with. She also told her about Mira’s actions in the station, the way he comforted her daughter.

“They are family,” Nomsulwa’s mother offered. “uMira is a good boy. Good boy with a hard father.”

They agreed that Mira would move in with the Sithus, go to school, eat meals at home. If Nomsulwa was insistent on spending time with her cousin, then the two women would turn the cousin into someone worth spending time with.

When Zembe left, Mama Sithu hugged her bigger and longer than it looked like she could. Small women with huge fire, Zembe thought. Then she said, “Nomsulwa is special, Mama. Something about her. She is a force.”

“It’s her name. ‘Purity’ is too large a burden for a girl. I told her father that, but he would not listen.”

“Perhaps it is her mother.” Zembe smiled.

“I wish I had that much influence over her.”

“I think she is more like you than you realize,” Zembe offered before turning to leave.

Their plan, surprisingly, worked. Zembe checked in weekly, then every month or so, and soon she and Mama Sithu spent their visits sipping tea and parsing township gossip rather than worrying about the children. Then the electricity and water men came, and Nomsulwa and Mira found a new way to run afoul of Zembe.

“Y
OU HERE TO SEE ME, BHUTI?”
Z
EMBE STOPS
M
IRA
before he gets through the door.

“Yebo, Mama. uNomsulwa told me to come.”

“I know your friend is back in town.”

“I have lots of friends, Mama.” Mira turns, leans against the wall, and lights a hand-rolled cigarette.

“I am interested in one friend in particular. Kholizwe.”

“What makes you think he is in town?” Mira exhales, looking around at the street, squinting for a look at the goings-on, even though the police station is a good two blocks from the tightly packed Phiri centre.

“Don’t waste my time. Just give me the name of the shebeen he’s using this time.”

Mira doesn’t let his eyes meet Zembe’s. He shuffles his feet and makes a big show of pondering the request. Then he shrugs his shoulders, stomps out the cigarette even though it is only half smoked, and starts to walk away.
Before Zembe can protest, Mira tosses over his shoulder, “I saw him last at Tiger’s. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

Zembe watches him walk for almost a minute before heading inside. She turns at the front desk to enter the wide room that holds the desks and lockers of her officers.

“I need three men.”

One of the two people in the room turns to her. He is an older officer, hired on to the force before Zembe, but stuck on the same assignment for too long because of intermittent alcoholism.

“I’m not supposed to start rounds of Zone 2 until they get back with the buggy.”

Zembe turns to Tosh, who is standing behind her. “You free?”

“Sure.” He walks to the desk and picks up a second holster.

“Hold here for a moment, both of you, we need to find one more.”

“One more?” Sipho’s low voice sounds from behind the partition. He walks in and stands next to Zembe.

“What are you doing here?”

“Helping, it turns out, although I thought I was just checking up on you. Was ordered to, in fact, see if the Phiri station was handling things.”

“Fucking national,” Zembe says under her breath.

“Now, now.” Sipho puts a hand on her shoulder. “If it wasn’t for national you’d be one man short. Where are we going, anyhow?”

“I have a lead on Kholizwe’s location.”

Sipho pauses. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call in backup for this? We have no way to know how he’ll react when we take him.”

“We aren’t taking him.”

“We aren’t?” Sipho sits in the chair on the other side of Tosh’s desk. He looks at Zembe with resigned eyes, as though he knows this is going to be a fight.

“We have no evidence, no way of knowing if he’s responsible. I’m not sending him into hiding until we know for sure.”

“And how will we know for sure?” The two officers watch the back-and-forth between Sipho and Zembe. Zembe wishes he would take the condescension out of his voice.

“I have a way.”

“And I’m supposed to trust you?”

Zembe doesn’t respond. She motions for her two officers to follow her. “I’ll go without you if I have to,” she says.

Sipho follows her without further protest, deciding, she guesses, to wait it out and see what unfolds. Zembe understands that approaching Kholizwe without arresting him may cause him to run anyway. But she won’t risk arresting him only to have him turned loose a few days later. A man with a record would usually be ushered quickly into the criminal court system and given a government lawyer, who, when offered a stiff sentence, would agree and have their client shipped off to jail. Kholizwe, unfortunately, can afford to pay for a real lawyer. A white lawyer. That can equal
freedom, or at least a light sentence. When she gets him for this murder, Zembe wants it to stick.

The men pile into Zembe’s own car and begin the trip to Tiger’s. No one speaks. Sipho grunts while texting on his cellphone; Tosh drums out an imaginary beat on his thigh. Zembe can tell they are nervous. She is nervous too, but she drives smoothly, forcing her hands to hold the wheel lightly, to move the gearshift slowly.

T
IGER’S SHEBEEN IS A TUMBLEDOWN BOX OF METAL
and wood on the outskirts of Phiri’s lok’shini. At night it brims with teenagers clutching large bottles of beer, but during the day a few men sit, drinking and playing dominoes. A woman is behind the counter, head down on her hands. No sign of Kholizwe. Zembe walks in alone once the group of them have established that the gang leader is nowhere in sight.

“Wake up!” Zembe taps the woman on the side of the head. She doesn’t move, just groans, so Zembe tries to physically pry her head up from the bar. The woman looks at Zembe for a second before closing her eyes again. Zembe gives up and turns to the old men playing dominoes.

“I’m looking for Kholizwe.”

The men laugh. The table, uneven on its legs, shakes and one of the domino pieces falls, revealing its dotted side to the man’s opponent.

“Voetsek,” the man mutters.

“Is he here?”

“Does it look like he’s here?” the opponent grunts.

“He was here yesterday. I need to know where he went.”

“Out.” The men aren’t afraid to give Kholizwe up. They seem nonplussed about the possibility of his return.

“Is he coming back?”

“Don’t know.” The man sitting closest to Zembe places a tile on the growing pattern of dominoes, then he smacks his fist on the table triumphantly.

“Ha!”

“Nah, can’t place it there, you didn’t announce.” The men descend into an argument. Spit flies and fists slam. The table wobbles dangerously and the men seem unaware of the impending collapse of their game.

When the table settles, the man with the overactive fist mumbles to Zembe, “uKholizwe is meeting with the happy men from lok’shini two.”

His opponent laughs. “Yeah, happy is a needle and an ice cream cone.”

“Yebo, bhuti. Yebo,” the fist answers, chuckling as he gently lays down a double six.

Zembe doesn’t say thank you or wait to see the end of the game. She walks quickly away from them and back out the door.

“Sipho, let’s get back in the car. He’s not here.”

“Are we going back to the station?”

“No, he’s in Zone 4, at the heroin house. Let’s drive there and see if we can’t track him down.”

The older officer groans audibly. Zembe ignores him and gets back into the car. They drive a roundabout route to the
east side of downtown Soweto. Trawling the streets runs them past at least four groups of tsotsis who point at Zembe, kick dust behind her tires. But none of them hide the gang leader.

“Let’s head to the far side of the house. I’ll drive around from the back while you set up a perimeter,” Zembe instructs. They approach the white shack stuck between two red brick structures. She sees the flash of a familiar face on the south corner as soon as her vehicle noses around to the front. She mutters into her radio and drives the car around to where Kholizwe can see it. Before opening the door, she prays:
Keep my soul, and deliver me; let me not be ashamed for I put my trust in You. In Jesus Christ, Amen
.

Zembe signals Sipho and the other two officers to stand back by the doors of her car. Sipho starts to protest and Zembe shoots him a hard look. She is running point on this one, irrespective of rank. After a second of hesitation, he and the others find their spots and place their feet shoulder-width apart, hands hovering over their hips, ready to draw when necessary. Zembe walks towards the man at the front of the house alone.

Kholizwe’s eyes are set deep in their sockets. Triplet scars adorn his left temple. His face is wide and flat with pointed cheekbones, and his lips are too thin. So thin that when he sneers his teeth take over his face, so thin that the spit he aims at Zembe’s feet can escape easily. Zembe turns to him, facing her broad shoulders towards his slumped frame. She doesn’t allow herself to show any reaction.

“Watch yourself, bhuti.”

Kholizwe leans back and puts his hands in his pockets, revealing the bright silver of two handguns tucked into matching holsters.

Kholizwe is the mascot spirit of Phiri gang culture. He is nowhere and at the same time on the lips of all the nine-year-olds acting out shootouts on their mothers’ front walks. He has survived two gang wars and a five-year stint in Sun City. He is only twenty-four. Zembe met him when he first joined Thug Life: children, twelve to sixteen years old, training for life in the real gangs. They mostly deal in tik, a bastard version of crystal meth that promises a longer high than crack if you’re willing to pay the twenty rand extra. Zembe was on the team that put him away for armed robbery after the gang rape and murder of four high school students in their school’s playground. They had been lucky to pin him with anything. In Sun City, Kholizwe joined the 28s and rose quickly. By the end of his five years he owned his own cell in the prison and had at least ten men under him.

Zembe doesn’t ask him about the guns, but she lets her own jacket fall open, revealing her pair of police-issued
RAP
401s in a subtle grey-black. Now they are even. It is daytime, but the street corner where Kholizwe has stationed himself for the day is as deserted as Zembe’s own block after dark.

“I killed the last pig who showed me his gun.”

The tsotsitaal is harsh from his lips. It cuts, showing the ragged piecemeal of the language. Tsotsitaal is a weapon for Kholizwe, partly because everything he says is weighted
with truth. He doesn’t boast because he doesn’t have to.

“What do you want, pig? Or sow, shouldn’t I call you a sow?”

Zembe steps forward and comes within a foot of Kholizwe’s face. He merely glances at the line of policemen, now with their guns drawn.
Keep my soul, and deliver me—I put my trust in You
, Zembe repeats to herself.

“You know what I’m looking for.” She tugs on the collar of her own shirt, illustrating.