No Turning Back (6 page)

N
o one was sure of the way, and the streets were confusing. Main roads had to be avoided wherever possible, just in case the
gumba-gumba
or a police car appeared. Passing by houses behind locked gates, they were alarmed when dogs sniffed them and began to bark. If someone saw them, they might think they were thieves and call the police. But when they came to a small shopping center and saw ahead of them a night watchman by a fire, they decided to take a chance. Lucas indicated that Sipho should come with him while the others remained behind in the shadows.

“Sawubona, baba,
good evening. May we warm ourselves by your fire for a short while, please?” Lucas began.

“Hawu, bafana!
Why are your clothes so wet, my children?” asked the watchman. He was an elderly man and wore a blanket over his shoulders.

“Some men caught us and threw us in the water,
baba,”
Lucas replied.

“What kind of men can do that to children?” said the old man.

“We don’t know who they are, only they were in a
gumba-gumba
and we did nothing to them,” continued Lucas. “But
baba,
we have more friends who are also cold and wet. Can they come to the fire too,
baba?”

The watchman studied their faces closely for a couple of seconds and then nodded. Sipho turned and called the others.

The watchman made tea for them as they huddled by his fire. Shaking his head at times, he listened to them as they talked while passing the hot mug from one to the other.

“Police! They should be helping to stop all this violence. How can we have peace when police also do these things?” he commented bitterly. He asked the question in a tone that didn’t expect a reply. But then, looking directly at Lucas, he asked, “Are police always doing this to you?

“Some of them give us a hard time, hitting and chasing us. But not all of them,
baba.”

Lucas told the story of a policeman who had arrested four white boys after they had been chasing
malunde
with bicycle chains. There were also some policemen who asked
malunde
to wash their vans, giving them bread and tea and even a bit of money. But mostly, police gave them trouble.

“Like that time they forced us to drink
mbamba,”
added Jabu, screwing up his mouth. “Then they took us to the police station to punish us because we were drunk!”

Fixing his eyes on Jabu and Sipho next to him, the old man said, “My grandson, he is the same size like you. My heart would be very sore if he was on the streets like you children.”

Before they left, the watchman pointed out the best route to Hillbrow. They thanked him for his kindness. Their clothes were still wet, but no longer dripping. Sipho felt that the worst of his trembling had passed. In Hillbrow they would try to sort themselves out. Lucas said they should also spend a few nights there, in case there was another attack on the
pozzie.
In the meantime he would look for another place for them.

The stars were fading and the sun just coming up by the time they were within reach of Hillbrow. It was best to split up in case the police were still patrolling. They could meet by Checkers later, when the streets were busier. Members of the gang branched off into different streets until only Sipho and Jabu were left. They were entering Hillbrow, with tall buildings on either side.

“See you later,
buti!”
Jabu said, as he too turned off into a side street.

Sipho continued up the hill. His torn canvas shoes padding on the pavement seemed to echo behind him. Lights in the windows high above showed that people were beginning to wake, but the street was still strangely quiet in the half-light. A man walking a dog on a leash tugged it away from Sipho as they passed. He would have liked to say hello to the little dog, which had tufts of long hair over its eyes, but the man didn’t look very friendly. Each time a vehicle passed Sipho turned to be sure it was not the police, but most times it was just another early-morning taxi.

Perhaps it was the chance of warming himself inside the video games shop when it opened that led Sipho in the direction of the street where he had first arrived in Hillbrow. It seemed more than just a few days ago. The grille across the front meant he couldn’t shelter there. But perhaps he could wait in the entrance to Danny’s Den. He hoped Mr. Danny wouldn’t mind. Feeling suddenly so tired that he could hardly think straight, he sank down outside the shop door. Clasping his arms around him, as if that could get rid of the horrible cold, sweaty damp, Sipho rolled over onto the pavement. It was hard and hurt his head. He no longer had his wooly cap. Had it been pulled off him or come off as he hit the water? He didn’t know. Nothing mattered now except sleep.

“Hey, Dad! This kid’s clothes look quite damp! He’s shivering in his sleep!”

“Well, he can’t sleep here. We have to open the shop in half an hour.”

“He’s only a kid, Dad! It’s disgraceful any kid has to live like this!”

The sound of voices made Sipho jerk up. He didn’t want any more kicks in the ribs.

“Oh, so it’s you!” said the man’s voice.

Sipho wiped his sleeve across his eyes and looked up at the mustached face of Mr. Danny.

“Sorry…sorry, sir. I’m just going,” stammered Sipho, pushing himself up.

“Don’t you know you get sick like that, sleeping in wet clothes!” said Mr. Danny.

“Hold on, Dad! He probably couldn’t help it! How did you get so wet?” said the tall girl next to him.

She had long hair the color of ripe
mealies,
and her deep-blue eyes looked straight into Sipho’s. He didn’t know what to say. Would these people believe him?

“Was it a prank, hey? You and your friends messing around?” Mr. Danny ventured.

“No, sir! We weren’t messing, sir! We weren’t doing anything bad, sir! These men came while we were sleeping…” Before he had even time to think, Sipho blurted out the events of the night.

The grabbing, the kicking, the screaming, the shouting, the journey in the
gumba-gumba…
being flung into the lake, not being able to swim…walking back frozen, soaked and with cut feet…

As he told the story, Sipho didn’t look at Mr. Danny and his daughter. In front of his eyes he saw all the awful things happening over again. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself, and when he finished speaking there was silence. Then he cast a quick glance at the girl’s face. It was clouded, and her blue eyes were no longer so clear.

“I think you had better come inside,” said Mr. Danny quietly. “We can find you something dry to put on.”

At the back of the shop was a little office with a couple of chairs next to a cluttered desk. Mr. Danny’s daughter pulled out a small electric fire from under the desk and turned it on.

“You can sit here,” she said. “Dad’s getting you some clothes. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Sipho,” he replied just as Mr. Danny came into the room.

“Here, try these, Sipho,” he said, holding out a green sweatshirt and a pair of black jeans. He pointed to a couple of smocks hanging behind the door. “You can wear one of those on top. When you’ve warmed up, you can come and give
me a hand in the shop if you feel up to it.”

Mr. Danny turned to his daughter. “Come on, Jude. We’d better hurry up if we’re to open on time. Maria should have been here by now. She was late last Saturday too. I’ll have to dock her pay if this goes on. These people always have some excuse!”

“Maria is not ‘these people,’ Dad! She’s herself!”

“I don’t care who she is. I just want her to be on time!”

Sipho was left alone in the office. His fingers quivered and fumbled as he undid the buttons of his jacket. He sighed. It had looked so smart when he had put it on the day before. And how strange this was! Only on very special occasions had Ma ever been able to give him new clothes. Mostly he wore clothes passed on from one person to the next. Once stripped, he rubbed himself briskly all over with the flat palms of his hands, feeling also the rays of warmth coming from the red electric bar. He didn’t want to cover up the new sweatshirt and jeans, but Mr. Danny had asked him to put on the smock. It was long for him, reaching almost to his ankles. What would Ma say if she could see him now in a smock like hers and if she knew what had happened to him? Turning his shoes upside down, he examined the holes before placing them close
to the electric fire next to his damp bundle of clothes. He was wondering whether to crouch by the fire or sit on the chair when he heard the voices of Mr. Danny and his daughter coming from the shop. The girl’s voice was high and clear.

“But, Dad, what are you going to do? Police are meant to help children, not harm them!”

Mr. Danny’s voice was too low to hear properly, but Sipho made out something about a job.

“Dad, it’s not just a job he needs. He needs somewhere to sleep! Somewhere safe.”

Just then they were interrupted by someone, and Mr. Danny sounded angry. Moments later the office door swung open. A large woman walked in, frowning. Her wide brown forehead was glistening with sweat under a black beret. It was Maria. She had been friendly to him when he had done odd jobs for Mr. Danny in the front of the shop. When she saw him now, her frown changed to surprise. Reaching for the other green smock behind the door, she greeted Sipho and asked if something was wrong. Before he could say anything, Mr. Danny’s daughter slipped in and took her hand.

“Come, Maria. If you make us all a cup of tea, Dad will calm down and I’ll tell you everything.”

S
lowly Sipho chewed the last corner of the thick slice of bread and jam that Maria brought him. He washed it down with a final mouthful of tea. What was it Mr. Danny had said? That he should come and help in the shop if he felt “up to it”? The terrible tiredness had gone, and he was feeling a lot better with his new dry clothes and some food in his stomach. But what about Jabu and the others? Had any of them had his luck? Had Joseph and Matthew found someone to help them get the
iglue
out of their hair? Perhaps he should go and look for them. Yet how could he help them?

At that moment Mr. Danny put his head around the door. “Ah, Sipho. That’s good. You’re looking a lot better. You can come and help me now.”

Sipho followed him out through the shop to the entrance. Mr. Danny’s daughter was taking money at the cash register and she smiled at Sipho as he went past.

“What I want you to do, Sipho”—Mr. Danny paused showing him two brightly colored T-shirts still in their plastic covering—”is to take these and stand by the corner. You show them to people and tell them ‘Special offer! Fifteen rand! Only at Danny’s Den!’”

“Yes, sir,” replied Sipho.

Mr. Danny’s mustache twitched with a sudden chuckle.

“Perhaps you’d look better without that big smock. Then people can see how nice the new sweatshirt looks on you too!”

“Yes, sir,” replied Sipho, slipping off the smock and exchanging it for the T-shirt packages Mr. Danny held out for him.

Sipho placed himself at a spot where the sun shone on him. It was getting warmer, but it wasn’t
that
warm yet. Holding up a green T-shirt in one hand and a red one in the other, he began to call out, “Special offer!…”

The sun had passed its high point when Mr. Danny’s daughter came to ask if he wanted something to eat.

“Thank you, miss!” His voice was getting a little hoarse and he needed a break.

“My name is Judy,” she said firmly.

What did she mean, thought Sipho? On the farm he had been taught to call white children
“missie” or “baasie.” Even his grandmother used to call them that. But calling Kobus, his playmate, “little master” stuck in his throat, and he had never called him that when they were on their own. It was stupid, but if you didn’t say it the farmer and his wife would say you were getting cheeky. They might even tell your grandmother you must be taught a lesson.

“Dad says you’ll make a good salesman,” Mr. Danny’s daughter continued as they walked back to the shop. “He reckons we’ve had more customers, even for a Saturday.”

Judy—as she insisted Sipho should call her—shared her sandwiches and tried to make conversation as they sat in the office. He could see she was trying hard to be friendly. But he still felt awkward, and when she asked whether he had any parents, he shook his head.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said quietly.

Sipho kept his eyes down. The lie was out before he had even thought about it. But wasn’t it safer that way? If these people knew he had a mother, he could be taken back to her, and then…Ma would be crying and he would be crying, clinging, clinging to her, until her husband would rip him away to give him “the lesson” he would never ever forget. It was too terrible to think about. Trying to wipe out the picture, Sipho looked to see what had happened to the
pile of clothes he had left by the fire. Judy read what was now in his mind.

“Maria rinsed out your clothes. They’re drying out in the back. You should have seen her face when she smelled them! That water must have been really bad where they threw you.”

“Ja,
it was,” replied Sipho, pursing his lips.

He didn’t want to seem rude, but he didn’t know what to say to this girl.

From his position on the corner, where he spent most of the afternoon calling out about Danny’s Den, Sipho kept a lookout for members of the gang. None of them came by. A couple of
malunde
whom he knew by sight passed him, and he asked if they had seen Lucas or any of the others. But they had been away in Rosebank all day and hadn’t even heard of the raid.

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Danny called him inside to help sweep up in the shop. Maria had already brought in the tables from outside and tidied the shelves and was ready to leave as Sipho took up the broom. He would have liked to leave earlier too, so he could look for his gang. The thought of sleeping on his own frightened him more than ever now. But Mr. Danny hadn’t given him a chance to say anything before giving him another job. He also needed to collect his own clothes. With the sun going down, it was
becoming cold again and he wanted his sweater and jacket. Would Mr. Danny ask him to give back the sweatshirt and jeans, he wondered?

“Count this up, will you, Jude?” said Mr. Danny, carrying the small packages next to the cash register into the office.

He pulled the door behind him, but it remained slightly ajar. Alone in the shop, Sipho swung the broom into action, making little piles of dirt before sweeping them all together into the center of the room. The voices of Mr. Danny and his daughter were low, but as Sipho approached the office to collect the small dustpan behind the door, he heard his name and stopped.

“It’s not quite so simple, Jude,” Mr. Danny was saying. “I agree he seems a nice enough kid, but we don’t really know him. It’s one thing to give him some clothes and a bit of work. It’s quite another thing to take him home with us.”

“So you’re happy to leave him sleeping out here when you know he could get beaten up again?”

“I’m not happy about it and you know it. But where do you stop, Jude? Hundreds…thousands of children don’t have proper homes, safe homes. I can’t solve all that!”

“We’re only talking about Sipho, Dad. And he hasn’t even got a home. He’s an orphan!”

Sipho’s brow furrowed as he tried to follow what they were saying. Did Judy want him to go home with them?

‘And what about David? You know how difficult he’s become since your mother left.” Mr. Danny’s voice was becoming less forceful.

“David’ll be all right, Dad. You’ve just got to stop giving in to him all the time. He’s really playing on your weak spots. It’ll do him good to have to do a bit of sharing,” Judy replied.

They continued to talk, and Sipho continued to listen. He still only understood bits of what they were saying. Who was this David? What was it Mr. Danny had said about the mother having left? What was so strange to him, however, was how Judy was talking to her father. She didn’t seem at all scared to say what she wanted.

“Well, it can only be on a trial basis, do you understand, Jude?” Mr. Danny paused. “And I tell you, Jude, if Ada doesn’t like him, he’ll have to go. She’s a good judge of people, and we’ll know soon enough what she makes of this young man!

“Okay! I agree!” Judy’s voice rose. It sounded cheerful.

Sensing that Mr. Danny and his daughter were about to come out of the office, Sipho hastily knocked on the door.

“I need the dustpan, please,” he said.

Mr. Danny looked at him steadily for a few moments, stroking down the ends of his mustache with his thumb and forefinger before running his hand back over his head as if to make his hair flat. Sipho watched the dark tufts bounce back up. Judy looked from her father to Sipho and back again.

“Look here, Sipho, I have a suggestion. I can give you somewhere to sleep at my house for the time being, and in the daytime you can come to work here in the shop. We can see how that works. What do you say?”

Sipho didn’t know what to say. It was confusing. What would it be like to sleep in this white person’s house? He had been waiting to finish his work so he could go and find Jabu and the others to see if they were all right. There was nowhere for them to sleep except on the streets. The pavements would be hard, freezing cold and also dangerous. And yet here he was being offered a place in a house, under a roof, and probably a bed with blankets.

“Why don’t you just come with us and see.” Judy offered, breaking the silence.

“Thank you, m…” He was about to say “miss,” but stopped himself.

“Thank you, Mr. Danny, sir,” he said.