Ishmael Toffee (7 page)

Ishmael pushes on with the last bit of strength in his muscles,
heart ready to be puked out his mouth,
and they’re over the top and onto the flatland of garbage stretching away forever toward the light towers of Tin Town. Ishmael sucks air, wants to stop. Can’t. The child is dragging on the ground, kicking and fighting at him from inside his shirt. He braces his legs, leans back and lifts her higher, locking his arms around her body and staggers on like he’s carrying a barrel of beer.

He looks over his shoulder and sees one of the Americans coming up over the edge, the light towers throwing his shadow long enough to fall on Ishmael like a tree.

“We fucked, missy,” he gasps, his legs cramping to a standstill under him.

Then he hears a mad roar and a clatter as a helicopter, blades sending the garbage into the air in a twister of shit, rises like a big mosquito over the edge of the dump, a disc white as a
dinner plate
rushing over the landfill, hunting them down.

Ishmael spots a mound of trash piled up around a car wreck and he dives at it head first, saying “sorry, missy,” as they land and roll and he feels the soft, rotting garbage welcome them, letting them sink away under the car just as that beam slides on by.

21

Cindy has to pee. It feels like she has a big bag of water inside her tummy and it wakes her. She lies next to the little man, can hear him snoring like a beehive and feels his body hot like when she used to cuddle her old dog who died.

She sits up, careful not to bump her head on the big piece of tin that covers them. They have slept on rubbish and she can hear her mommy’s voice:
poof, Cindy, this smells to high heaven.

Cindy feels a drop of pee on her leg and she shakes the little man. “Ishmael,” she says. “Ishmael!” He grunts and groans, but he doesn’t wake up.

There is blood dried on his head like blackberry jam from where the window glass cut him. He was very brave and he looks soft and peaceful so she leaves him and crawls out on all fours, until she is clear of the tin.

They slept on top of the dump and all she can see is stinky garbage except for a jet plane like a sliver bird that sinks down low and disappears as if the trash ate it. She is shy to make a pee so close to the little man, so she walks on, her feet sinking into stuff like old porridge.
Yuck.

She goes behind a mountain of black plastic bags split open and spilling out stuff that is even more stinky. She sees a pink piggy head staring up at her, flies crawling all over it like a walking black carpet.

She runs away from the piggy and hides behind a pile of shiny Coke cans and pulls down her jeans and her panties and sits, careful not to let her butt touch the ground and lets go, watching a puddle grow between her feet, moving so she doesn’t splash her sneakers.

When she’s done she doesn’t have anything to wipe herself with, so she just stands and pulls up her panties and her jeans. She’s very thirsty and the sun burns through her short hair because she took off her cap when she slept.

Cindy looks around. Everything looks the same. Brown and dirty. She can’t see where they slept and she can’t see Ishmael. There are people like black crayon drawings far away, picking things up from the ground, and she knows they mustn’t see her, so she runs and hides behind an upside down stove, the empty oven open like a mouth. She sits with her back against the stove and holds herself and says,
you must be a big girl, Cindy. You must be a big girl and remember where you left the little man.

So she stands and looks and looks and then she sees something she remembers: a dirty yellow bulldozer, parked on top of a mountain of rubbish, and she knows if she walks that way she will find Ishmael.

Cindy sets off, keeping her eye on the dark people outlined against the sky, making sure they are not getting any closer. Watching them so carefully that she nearly steps on a man’s feet. Bare feet, with pink underskin, joined to black legs with funny curly hairs on them like the steel wool Flo uses to wash the dishes.

When Cindy hears the animal moans she tries to retreat, but it’s too late and she slips on something messy and ends up on her hands and knees in the wet trash, looking at the man who lies on his back, staring at her around the side of a lady who is sitting on top of him, bouncing up and down on the man, her dress flapping and flopping.

The lady stops bouncing and turns and Cindy can’t help it—she screams. The lady has an orange face swollen like a pumpkin and only one eye. Where the other one should be is just a big, dark hole with skin pulled into it like a sausage tied at the end.

Cindy screams herself to her feet and runs, flying across the garbage, and she hears the lady shouting but she runs on, around a big mound of rotting trash and straight into hands that grab her tight and cover her mouth and shut off her screaming and her air.

●

Ishmael lifts the child off the ground and whispers into her ear. “Sshhh, now, missy. Sshhh now.” She sees it’s him, and she quits struggling and he takes his hand away from her mouth. “You okay?”

She nods, gasping. He lowers her, but keeps a hold on her hand, kneeling down till he’s the same size as her. “Did anybody spot you, Cindy?” She nods. “Who?”

“A horrible lady and a man.”

Ishmael searches the landfill and sees only the scavengers over on the airport side. But they must make quick, now. He pulls the child along and they hurry back to the shelter he found for them the night before. They can’t stay here. Too exposed.

He gets her under the tin and wipes his hand in the earth, finds something wet and sticky, rubs his fingers in the sand until they are muddy, then he pulls her to him and smears the dark paste on her face.

She creases up her nose and shuts her eyes tight, going, “Uh, uh” through her closed mouth.

But he hides enough of that white target of a face and when he shoves the cap on her head and pulls it down low, she looks like just some other dirty colored kid.

“Gimme your hands,” he says, and she obeys. And he smears dirt on them too, till they are the same color as him. “Okay,” he says, sitting back on his heels. “Now, you no more Cindy, okay? You Bobby.”

“Bobby?”

“Ja. Boy’s name. I need to call you, I gonna call Bobby. You get that?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He takes her by the hand and they come up from under the tin like rats and he checks to see they’ve got no company before they take off across the rubbish.

“Ishmael, I’m thirsty. And hungry.”

 “I know. Me too. I’m gonna sort that, okay?”

She nods and he lets her hand drop. Feels her fingers groping for his. He stops, puts a hand gently on her cap. “Boys don’t hold hands. Okay, Bobby?”

“Okay.” She nods and smiles up at him. “I can be a boy.”

“I know it. Now come.”

He takes off again, the kid at his heels. No water. No food. No money and fuck-all idea what to do next.

22

The gate buzzer won’t stop drilling into Florence’s head as she tidies up the living room, clearing away the empty wine bottles that show how Mr. Goddard spent his night. 

When she came back from the store with milk this morning she had to fight her way through the reporters swarming the driveway, with their cameras flashing at her as she got herself in the gates and closed them, shouting, “Florence! Florence! Look this way, Florence ! Look sad, Florence! Florence, how is John holding up?” like they all of a sudden were best friends of the family.

The media, Mr. Goddard calls them. Bloody vultures, she calls them, with their “Little Cindy” story all over the papers and the TV.

Domestic workers (one’s she never bothered to give the time of day to before) crowded around her at the store, clucking like chickens saying, “That poor little child. The Lord only knows what that thing is doing to her. Jail is too good for him, they must give him to us and we’ll fix him good and proper.”

But under the sympathy is the scratching sound of greed. Greed for that reward. A quarter of a million, more cash than most Cape Flats families will see in a lifetime. Every eye on the streets out there looking for the gangster and the child. Looking to hit the jackpot.

Florence dumps the booze bottles in the trash in the kitchen and rinses the glass, sticky with red wine like blood, the buzzer shouting at her from the hallway.

Mr. Goddard comes in looking like hell. Unshaven, something yellow and sick under his tan, his eyes red and his blond hair dark and greasy. He looks like he’s slept in his clothes, and she can smell him, the wine and stale sweat.

“Have you heard anything?” she asks.

Mr. Goddard just shakes his head and takes a bottle of spring water from the fridge and drinks deep from it, splashing some down his chin onto his shirt. He screws the cap back onto the bottle and wipes his face with his hand. 

He goes into the hallway and she hears the buzz as he releases the gates and within seconds those media people have run up the driveway, fighting each other to get to the house, shouting questions even as she sees Mr. Goddard step out of the front door and hold his arms wide like he’s Jesus Christ on the cross. Flashbulbs explode burning him paper-white and the reporters push microphones into his face like they’re trying to force-feed him.

John Goddard just stands there with his arms out and his eyes closed, and amazingly the crowd shuts up. When it’s dead quiet he opens his eyes and speaks, his voice thick and rough.

“People, thank you for being here. For bringing my daughter’s desperate plight to the attention of the world.”

He pauses, looks around, and Florence can see how he is the victim, now, in his head. All that he has done to the girly gone and forgotten.

“We still have no idea where Cindy is, even though the police are working tirelessly around the clock. All I can do is plead with the man who has taken my child to return her to me. We have had a tragic year, with the death of my wife,” he breaks off, fighting away tears and the cameras eat him up, “and this is more than my daughter and I should have to endure.” And tears come now, dribbling down his cheeks, little waterfalls catching the light of the flashbulbs. “I want to announce that I have doubled the reward for Cindy’s safe return. I am now offering a half a million rand. Please, please, bring my Cindy home to me.”

He turns and walks into the house and the media shout questions at him, but he closes the door. Reporters jump in front of the TV cameras, quickly brushing their hair or pulling their ties straight, and they speak into the lenses, making the people out there even more greedy for all that reward money.

Florence hears the whoop of a siren and two white cop cars push through the vultures. The big Boer plainclothes from the night before gets out the front car, two colored uniformed cops walking behind him as he crosses to the kitchen door and knocks loud as a debt collector.

Florence dries her hands on a cloth and unlocks the door. “Mr. Goddard is inside,” she says.

The Boer says, “It’s you I want to see, Mrs. April.”

“Ja? Why for?”

“We want to search your quarters. Please open them for us.”

“Why you wanna search my room? I done nothing.”

One of the uniformed cops takes her arm. “Better you just open for us, lady.”

“Show me your warrant,” Florence says, her voice shaking.

“They don’t need a warrant,” Mr. Goddard says, entering the kitchen. “You live on my property and I’ve given the police permission. Now I advise you to cooperate with them.”

The second uniformed cop grabs her other arm and they walk her out the door like she’s a common criminal.

23

The taxi drops the woman in front of Ishmael and the kid like she’s a gift from God. As the co-driver slams closed the sliding door, the minibus rattles off trailing exhaust smoke. The woman leaves the sidewalk and picks her way along a footpath curling through a strip of veld that’s flanked on one side by the landfill and on the other by the low houses of Paradise Park.

The open lot is littered with bags of rubbish and a pile of builder’s rubble. Ishmael and the kid are crouched behind the rubble, invisible to the woman, a nice respectable looking lady hurrying along on her high heels, her big leather bag held tight under her arm like she’s about to start playing the bagpipes.

Ishmael lifts a half brick from the pile. He sees the girly’s about to speak so he quick-quick puts a finger to her lips, shaking his head so hard it feels like it’s gonna fall off. He motions for her to stay where she is and she nods and makes herself small.

Ishmael squats, his back to the warm rubble, listening to the woman’s shoes crunching on the gravel. He flashes one more warning look at the kid, then he jumps up and grabs the woman by her arm, bringing the brick up like he’s going to smash her brains in.

He doesn’t even get a chance to tell her to give him her bag before she winds up and smacks him hard on the nose. He falls on his ass and the woman bolts toward the houses, screaming her head off.

Ishmael sprints after her, tackles her from behind and they fall to the dirt. He gets the woman under him and tries to pull the bag free from her hands. She bucks and kicks, her dress up around her waist and he can see her thick brown thighs and her pink panties.

“Rape!” she shouts. “Rape!”

“Jesus, lady, I don’t want your cunt, I jus’ want your bag!”

He grabs at the bag and she releases her grip and he pulls it free of her arm. She’s still screaming blue bloody murder as he runs back toward the kid. Two men working on a car outside one of the houses hear the commotion and are heading this way.

“Bobby! Bobby, come!” Ishmael yells and the girly falls in beside him, and he doesn’t stop, just hangs the bag’s strap from his shoulder, scoops up the kid and runs like hell toward where the dump leaks trash down into the veld.

24

Florence
unlocks the door to her room and plainclothes cops rush in like a pack of hunting dogs. White cops. Fat bastards with mustaches and pink faces, beer guts hanging over their gun belts, and one young girl who looks like she should still be in school, with a mess of blonde hair like some country singer, the men eyeballing her ass in her tight jeans.