The Boy Next Door (8 page)

“The thing with the Shonas is that they have to learn that they didn’t win the war; it was a negotiated settlement. They were
backed into a corner; it was a no-win situation. They had to accept whatever the Handbag and her windie, Lord Carry on Selling
the White Man Down the Drain, was prepared to give. Now I think of it, who knows if the Shonas are running about all over
the place because they’re so blimming ashamed. Could be something in that: trying to convince themselves that they actually
won
the war, that it wasn’t a Surrender. If they can’t take out the white man, they’re going to give it a go with the Ndebeles,
for old-time’s sake.”

We’re in his car at Khumalo. He has come to check out an old buddy of his, but I think he’s having second thoughts. He keeps
twirling the car window handle. We’ve been sitting in the car talking and being quiet and waiting.

And then he looks at me and smiles. “Yah, well, all that’s straight from the horse’s mouth, the Rhodesians running to South
Africa. You should hear that lot yakking on. Sad. They don’t know what’s hit them. And the Afrikaners and the Brits can’t
stand them. At least my old man stuck it out. Eeesh man, what’s so fricking funny?”

I don’t tell him it was the “Lord Carry on Selling the White Man Down the Drain” bit. I know he meant Lord Carrington and
I know that white people are really angry about the whole Lancaster thing and how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe—how Smith sold
them out after he had promised them that not in a thousand years would blacks ever rule Rhodesia.

“Yah, smile now, wait till they come tshaying you. And anyway, if they want to see real racialism, they should take a trip
across the border. That’s Hardcore racialism. There an Aff even looks at an Afrikaner the wrong way, he’s had it my boy. The
Afrikaners have a cruel, mean streak. As hard as diamonds that tribe. They should think themselves lucky this lot.”

I want to ask him about his life in South Africa—if he went to school, if he lived with his mother, if he has brothers or
sisters.

“Jeez,” he says. “I wished I smoked or something. The old man smoked like a chimney; smelt of bloody smoke big time.”

He hits the steering wheel with his hands; I jump a bit on my seat.

“Sorry. Jeez, I’m jittery today. Shit, let’s get out of here.”

But it’s too late. There’s someone by the gate, and a dog barking. He gets out of the car.

The dog is a Ridgeback. He’s baring his teeth and gnashing at the gate. He looks like he hasn’t been fed in days.

“Hamba Zulu! Foosake man!” shouts the man, giving the dog a kick in its hind leg. “Heh, Ian, is that you man, howzit?”

“Howzit, John, long time no see, heh?”

They give each other a high-five over the gate, and then they stand there looking at one another.

“So, I thought I’d come and check you out.”

“Bad timing, man. I’m on my way out. Got to hop over to the garage, some munt having a kadenze about overcharging; you won’t
believe what ideas they’re getting these days.”

His buddy shakes his keys. “Tell you what, how about Grey’s Inn, six o’clock. Check out the chicks. New stock just arrived
from England, come to save the natives.”

Ian turns a bit. I sit in the car very still.

“What’s that?” says his buddy looking over the gate to the car.

“Nothing. Just giving a lift.”

“So Grey’s Inn, right?”

“Right.”

They stand there until Ian says, “Okay, see you then,” and turns round.

In the car, on the road, he says, “The look on his face. To think we were mates. All the way through primary and now,
that
look. Didn’t want me anywhere near his property. Jeez. What did he think I was going to do?”

Later, while we are waiting for some cows to pass, he says, “Can’t blame him though, can I?”

The cows are moving slowly and they keep knocking into each other. There is no sign of the herd boy, who should be waving
his stick about, directing them to safety.

We sit in the car for a while. Ian taps the steering wheel with his fingers. I look at the last cow that has stopped at the
edge of the road and is looking back at us with very sad eyes. It looks as though his legs are about to buckle, and he will
collapse right there in the heat.

“Herd boy probably rolling off in the grass, suffering from Class One babbelas. Just take a look at the skinny things, can
hardly walk. It’s going to be a bloody scrappy year, that’s for sure. Bobs had better have his act together, get the GMB guys
in order; they’re exporting so much maize to Mozambique when the shit hits the fan here, ‘sorry, no stocks, hapana food’—man,
lots of hungry fuckers equals lots of angry fuckers. You should check out the mess in Khami.”

White people had started calling Mr. Mugabe, Bob. And sometimes they put “comrade” in front. Daddy says it’s a way for them
to belittle him, turn him into a boy, someone manageable like their workers. In truth they are frightened of him.

I had thought of how when I was at the telephone exchange with Daddy, sometimes the whites (some of them apprentices straight
out of school) whom he was training would call him Danny or Danny Boy and he would just laugh. I had also noticed that, since
independence, he didn’t tolerate that anymore.

I want to tell him that I’m not nervous anymore, even though I jumped a little bit before. I want to say that I don’t think
he is a bad person; that I like his name, Ian; that I’m not afraid of him.

But instead I say, “It’s hot.”

He turns to me and says, “Hey, madoda, kuyatshisa,” and laughs.

I laugh back.

And I can hear Maphosa. “Bastard!” “Settler!” “Sellout!”

We stop over at the old mineshaft. I want to say to him that we had better hurry; Mummy should be almost finished with her
group.

He gets out of the car, looks down at the quarry.

“Man, once when he was all boozed up, he started mouthing off about how many gondies they’d kicked into abandoned shafts,
makeshift graves. Said they cut off their tongues, threw those in first, and then the poor buggers.”

He looks back at me. “Shit, sometimes I forget you’re just a lightie.”

“I’m not a lightie.”

“Touchy, touchy.”

He puts his hand on my head and then steps away. “Shit, we should be going back. Your mother is going to throw a right old
kadenze.”

Before he starts the car, I say, “They’ve captured some dissidents, over at Nkayi.”

“They’ll be lucky if they get off with any balls left. Word is Commies from North Korea are drilling the Shonas with new and
improved torture techniques up in Inyanga.”

I tell him to stop at Alton Heights. I’ll catch an Emergency Taxi home. Just to be safe.

“Thank you,” I say. I turn to open the door and suddenly I feel his hand on my shoulder.

“So, Lindiwe, it’s good to have someone to joll with, someone who doesn’t think I’m bad news.”

I wait for him to say that now it is enough. To say something like thank you, good-bye, it’s time to move on.

He takes his hand away, but I still feel the pressure and heat of it. I want to put my hand on my shoulder, where his was.
To keep it there.

“Listen, man, we should try and arrange a way to meet.”

“Like an appointment?”

“Jeez, I’m not a doctor. I mean meet like friends.”

He puts his hand through his hair. “Asch man, forget it. It’s just… I’ll see you when I see you.”

“You can write something maybe, put it in the letter box.”

“What, so your mother can find it, no ways.”

“Not if you put it in at night, anytime after six. A small piece of paper.”

“With the appointment? Date, time, location.” And he smiles. “Okay, works both ways, you do the same your end if you want
to meet up.”

“Yes.”

And my heart jumps and skips.

Rosanna gives me a funny look when I come in. Mummy is still not in.

Ever since Rosanna became pregnant, Mummy has become short-tempered. The more Rosanna’s stomach grows, the shorter Mummy’s
temper becomes. Rosanna should have gone back to the village to have the baby. But now with all the problems in the rural
areas, it is not safe. When she saw Rosanna’s stomach, Mrs. Ncube said that this was surely a big healthy boy growing in there,
as heavy as anything, pulling Rosanna’s stomach so far down. That evening Mummy gave me a slap when I asked her for the keys
of the pantry so that I could get a new packet of sugar out, and then she locked herself in her room.

Rosanna will not say who the father is.

“Who is going to support this child?” shouted Mummy. “How can damages be paid when there is no culprit. Ba-Lindiwe you must
throw her out.”

Whenever Mummy addressed Daddy by “Lindiwe’s father,” it meant that a very serious request was being made and Mummy was calling
upon Daddy as head of the household and my protector to act. Even though Rosanna was Mummy’s relative, once she had come to
our place she became part of the family under Daddy’s guardianship.

Daddy said we must be charitable.

“We are not a charity!” shouted Mummy.

Mummy wanted to know where Rosanna was getting the money to buy all the fancy maternity wear and shoes from Bata. And what
of all the bags she kept bringing back from Babyrama, Woolworths, and even Meikles. Mummy told me to keep an eye on her and
not to leave anything lying around.

“With the excuse of this pregnancy, she is doing nothing. ‘I am tired,’ ‘my feet are hurting,’ but not too tired to go shopping.”

Rosanna is fairer skinned than Mummy and her face isn’t marked by dark patches because of using Ambi Fade skin lightening
cream. Rosanna doesn’t wear a glossy black wig like Mummy, but her short hair is neatly plaited in rows. She is also taller
than Mummy, and before she became pregnant the boys at the shops called her Miss Coca-Cola and made smooth movements with
their hands to illustrate the shape of her figure. Rosanna didn’t pay them any attention.

“I don’t like her change of attitude at all. She is acting as though she is the mistress of this house. When Mrs. Ncube came
yesterday and I asked her to fetch a glass of water, she actually started saying ‘but I’m…’ and I gave her such a look that
she thought better of it. Even Mrs. Ncube was surprised. That’s what happens when you act in a Christian manner, people take
advantage. She must watch out. I won’t stand for any nonsense.”

We are at
Chipangali by the lion enclosure. The lions have been fed, and they are lying down, their jaws matted with blood, sleepy
eyed, content. But they still make me nervous. Something, anything might provoke them.

I have the lighter in my pocket. I want to give it to him. I want him to know that I am on his side.

This is the furthest we’ve driven off and we met one roadblock. The policemen told us to get out of the car. They checked
the boot and under the seats. They asked us where we were going. They said we should not go any further than Chipangali.

I told Mummy and Daddy that I was going to the public library after school to study.

There is no one around but us and the animals.

“I wanted to be a bloody vet,” he says. “Jeez luck, didn’t even get round to sitting my O levels; had to get away from that
house. Education, that’s the key. The be-all and end-all.”

He sounds a bit like Daddy.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing.”

“Asch, I’m sick of looking at these lazy fossils. Let’s go and get a drink.”

In the gazebo it is very cool and we can hear the birds chittering away. The lady serving behind the counter looks at me and
makes a face. Ian orders two Cokes and some buns and chips. We sit at a table in front, and I put my hand in my pocket to
get a tissue out to blow my nose. The lighter makes a tinkling noise on the stones. Ian bends down to pick it up. The lighter
is in his hands. He turns it over, sees “Rhodesian Army” on it. His face changes. Splotches of red by his cheeks, on the side
of his head. He squeezes the lighter in his hand.

“So, what’s this?” he says, looking at me.

A cold weight is pressing hard on my chest.

“Something from your dad, a souvenir?”

Too late I realize I could lie. I could say yes.

“No, I… I found it in the vegetable garden. The policemen came, they were looking for evidence, they said… I wanted to give
it to you, today.”

“Man, so you think I… that that’s what happened, that I… You’ve had it all this time, why?”

I don’t even know why, but I start crying, tears just falling on my cheeks. I wipe them away.

He looks at me, and then he starts drinking his Coke. He puts the lighter on the table. I can’t drink, eat; I sit there looking
at the lighter.

He gets up. “Let’s go,” he says.

He leaves the lighter on the table.

We don’t talk on the drive back.

He drops me by the cemetery, and I walk the rest of the way home.

On the last
day of term, Bridgette throws up in the toilets. I help her clear up. She starts crying and stops.

“My dad is going to kill me,” she says.

After school we go to Grasshut. Every Friday we meet up there and we exchange news. She’s my best friend (Bridgette says we’re
“mates”), and because of this, I don’t really care what the other girls say—that I’m a bookworm, a teacher’s pet, a goody-goody.
Bridgette calls them losers, losers with a capital
L
and attention seekers.

We sit right at the back in the dark. We share a toasted cheese sandwich; I have a Coke and she a cream soda.

“I told him, and you should have seen how scared he got, Lins. He said he had nothing to do with it, as if I’d done the whole
thing by myself like Mary. He doesn’t want me around anymore. Can you imagine, a grown man acting like such a coward and one
of Daddy’s good friends, too. He gave me forty dollars. It’s something, I guess.”

She says that she will find a way to get rid of it.

I try to think of a baby inside Bridgette’s stomach. I try to put the biology drawings inside Bridgette. We are sitting here
and Bridgette has a baby growing inside her. The baby has a head, eyes, ears, a mouth. The baby has arms and legs. The baby
might have a penis.