The Three (6 page)

Hearing them screeching in the corridor took me right back to Stephen and Shelly’s wedding day, which, thanks to the Addams Family, would be remembered by everyone for all the wrong reasons. Stephen had asked me to be his best man, and I’d brought along my then boyfriend, Prakesh, as my plus one. Shelly’s mum had shown up in a pink polyester nightmare of a dress that gave her an uncanny resemblance to Peppa Pig, and Fester and Gomez had eschewed their usual knock-off leather jackets and trainers for ill-fitting off-the-peg suits. Shelly had worked hard to organise that wedding; she and Stephen didn’t have a lot of cash to throw around back then, it was before they did well in their respective careers. But she’d saved and scrimped and they’d managed to book a minor country house for the reception. At first the two halves of the family kept to their own territory. Shelly’s family on one side, me, Prakesh and Stephen and Shelly’s friends on the other. Two different worlds.

Stephen said afterwards he wished he’d put a cap on the bar. After the speeches (Marilyn’s was a moribund disaster) Prakesh and I stood up to dance. I can even remember the song:
Careless Whisper
.

‘Oy oy,’ one of the brothers yelled above the music. ‘Bum me a fag.’

‘Fucking poufs,’ the other one joined in.

Prakesh wasn’t one to take an insult lying down. There wasn’t even a verbal altercation. One minute we were dancing, the next, he was nutting the closest Adams to hand. The police were called, but no one was arrested. It ruined the wedding, of course, and the relationship; Prakesh and I split up shortly afterwards.

It was almost a blessing that Mum and Dad weren’t there to witness it. They died in a car crash when Stephen and I were in our early twenties. They left us enough to see us through the next few years; Dad was good like that.

Still, when the Addamses were shown into the waiting room by an intimidated nurse, one of the brothers, Jase I think it was, had the grace to look shamefaced when he saw me, I’ll give him that. ‘No hard feelings, mate,’ he said. ‘We got to stick together at a time like this, innit.’

‘My Shelly,’ Marilyn was sobbing. She went on and on about only finding out when a tabloid leaked the passenger list. ‘I didn’t even know they was going on holiday! Who goes on holiday in January?’

Jason and Keith passed the time flicking through their phones while Marilyn blubbered–I knew Shelly would have been horrified knowing they were part of this. But I was determined that for Jess’s sake, there wouldn’t be a scene.

‘Popping out for a fag, Mum,’ Jase said, and the other one sloped out after him, leaving me alone with the matriarch herself.

‘Well, what do you think about this, then, Paul,’ she started in. ‘Terrible business. My Shelly just gone.’

I mumbled something about being sorry for her loss, but I’d lost my brother, my twin, my best friend and I was hardly in a state to give her any real sympathy.

‘Whichever one of the girls they’ve found, she’ll have to move in with me and the boys,’ Marilyn continued. ‘She can share Jordan and Paris’s room.’ A massive sigh. ‘Unless we move into their house of course.’

Now wasn’t the time to inform Marilyn about Shelly’s custody decision, but I found myself blurting: ‘What makes you think you’re going to look after her?’

‘Where else will she go?’

‘What about me?’

Her chins quivered in indignation. ‘You? But you’re a… you’re an
actor
.’

‘She’s ready,’ the nurse said, appearing at the door and interrupting our delightful tête-à-tête. ‘You can see her now. But five minutes only.’

Even Marilyn had the nous to realise that now wasn’t the time to have this sort of fraught conversation.

We were given greens and face masks (where they found ones big enough for Marilyn’s bulk I’ll never know) and then we followed the nurse into a room designed to look like a hotel suite, all flowery sofas and state-of-the-art television, the illusion only partially broken by the fact that Jess was surrounded by heart monitors, drips and various other intimidating pieces of equipment. Her eyes were shut and she barely seemed to be breathing. Dressings covered most of her face.

‘Is it Jess or Polly?’ Marilyn asked no one in particular.

I knew straight away which twin she was. ‘It’s Jess,’ I said.

‘How the fu—how can you be so sure? Her face is covered,’ Marilyn whined.

It was her hair, you see. Jess’s fringe had a chunk cut out of it. Just before they’d left for the holiday, Shelly had caught Jess hacking away at it, trying to copy Missy K’s latest half-shorn style. Plus, Jess had the tiniest scar just above her right eyebrow from when she’d fallen against the mantelpiece when she was learning to walk.

She looked so tiny, so vulnerable, lying there. And I swore, right then, I’d do anything I could to protect her.

I was in the laundry room doing the ironing when I first heard about it. I was working hard to finish in time so that I could catch my taxi at four, so I was already stressed–the boss is very fussy and liked everything, even his socks, to be ironed. The madam ran into the kitchen and I could see by her expression that there was a problem. She usually only wore that face when one of her cats had brought in a rodent and she needed me to clean it up. ‘Angela,’ she said. ‘I’ve just heard on
Cape Talk
, something’s happened in Khayelitsha. Isn’t that where you live?’

I said yes, and asked her what it was–I assumed it must be another shack fire or trouble from a strike. She told me that from what she could gather, a plane had crashed. Together we hurried into the sitting room and switched on the television. It was all over the news and at first it was difficult for me to understand what I was seeing. Most of the clips just showed people running and screaming, balloons of black smoke billowing around them. But then I heard the words that chilled my heart. The reporter, a young white woman with frightened eyes, said that a church near Sector Five had been completely destroyed when the plane hit the ground.

My daughter Susan’s crèche was in a church in that area.

Of course, my first thought was that I must contact Busi, my sister, but I was out of airtime. The madam let me use her cellphone, but there was no answer; it went straight to voicemail. I was starting to feel sick, even light-headed. Busi always answers her phone. Always.

‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I have to leave. I have to get home.’ I was praying that Busi had decided to collect Susan, my daughter, from crèche early. It was Busi’s day off from the factory, and sometimes
she did this so that they could spend the afternoon together. When I left at five that morning to catch the taxi to the Northern suburbs, Busi was still fast asleep, Susan by her side. I tried to keep that image–Busi and Susan safe together–in my mind. That’s what I concentrated on. I only started to pray later on.

The madam (her real name is Mrs Clara van der Spuy, but the boss likes me to call her ‘madam’, which made Busi furious) said straight away that she would take me.

While I collected my bag, I could hear her having a fight with the boss on her cellphone. ‘Johannes doesn’t want me to take you,’ she said to me. ‘But he can go jump. I’d never live with myself if I let you catch a taxi.’

She didn’t stop talking all the way there, only pausing when I had to interrupt to give her directions. My stress levels were now making me feel physically ill; I could feel the pie that I’d eaten for lunch turning into a stone in my stomach. As we made it onto the N2 highway, I could see black smoke drifting into the air in the distance. Within a few kilometres, I could smell it. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be fine, Angela,’ the madam kept saying. ‘Khayelitsha is a big place, isn’t it?’ She turned on the radio; the newscaster was talking about other plane crashes that had occurred elsewhere in the world. ‘Blerrie terrorists,’ the madam swore. As we approached the Baden Powell road exit, the traffic thickened. We were surrounded by hooting taxis full of frightened faces, people, like me, desperate to get home. Ambulances and fire trucks screamed past us. The madam was beginning to look nervous; she was far out of her comfort zone. The police had set up roadblocks to try and prevent more vehicles getting into the area and I knew I would have to join the crowd and make my way to my section on foot.

‘Go home, madam,’ I said, and I could see the relief on her face. I didn’t blame her. It was hell. The air was thick with ash and already the smoke was making my eyes sting.

I jumped out of the car and ran towards the crowds fighting to get through the barricade they had set up across the road. The people around me were shouting and screaming, and I joined my voice to theirs. ‘
Intombiyam
! My daughter is in there!’ The police
were forced to let us through when an ambulance came racing towards us and needed to get out.

I ran. I have never run so fast in my whole life, but I didn’t feel tired–the fear pushed me onwards. People would emerge through the smoke, some of them covered in blood, and I’m ashamed to say I did not stop to help them. I concentrated on moving forward although at times it was difficult to see where I was walking. Sometimes that was almost a blessing as I saw… I saw flags stuck into the ground and blue plastic bags covering shapes–shapes that I knew were body parts. Fires raged everywhere and firefighters in masks were busy cordoning off other areas. People were being physically restrained from going in any further. But I was still too far away from the street where I lived–I needed to get closer. The smoke scorched my lungs, made my eyes stream, and every so often there would be a pop as something exploded. My skin was soon bathed in filth. The scene looked completely wrong, and I wondered if I had wandered into an unfamiliar area. I was looking for the top of the church, but it was not there. The smell–like a spit-braai mixed with burning fuel–made me vomit. I dropped to my knees. I knew I couldn’t go any closer if I wanted to carry on breathing.

It was one of the paramedics who found me. He looked exhausted, his blue overalls soaked with blood. All I could say to him was: ‘My daughter. I need to find my daughter.’

Why he chose to help me, I do not know. There were so many other people who needed help. He led me towards his ambulance and I sat in the front seat while he got on his radio. Within minutes, a Red Cross kombi arrived, and the driver motioned me to squeeze inside. Like me, the people inside it were all filthy, covered in ash; most wore the expressions of the deeply traumatised. A woman at the back stared silently out of the window, a sleeping child in her arms. The old man next to me shook silently; there were tear tracks on his dirty cheeks. ‘
Molweni
,’ I whispered to him, ‘
kuzolunga
.’ I was telling him that everything would be all right, but I didn’t believe it myself. All I could do was pray, making deals with God in my head so that Susan and Busi would be spared.

We passed by the tent filled with the dead. I tried not to look at it. I could see people hefting the bodies–more of those shapes covered in blue plastic–inside it. And I prayed even harder that they did not contain the bodies of Busi or Susan.

We were driven to the Mew Way community hall. I was supposed to sign my name at the entrance, but I just pushed past the officials and ran for the doors.

Even from outside, I could hear the sound of crying. It was chaos inside there. The centre was full of people huddled in groups, covered in soot and bandages. Some were crying, others looked deeply shocked, staring ahead sightlessly, like the people in the kombi. I began to push my way through the crowd. How would I ever find Busi and Susan in this mass? I saw Noliswa, one of my neighbours, who sometimes looked after Susan. Her face was thick with blood and black dirt. She was rocking back and forth and when I tried to ask her about Busi and Susan she just looked blank; the light had gone out of her eyes. Later, I found out that two of her grandchildren had been at the crèche when the plane had crashed into it.

And then I heard a voice saying, ‘Angie?’

I turned around slowly. And saw Busi standing with Susan in her arms.

I screamed, ‘
Niphilile
! You are alive!’ over and over again.

We stood and held each other–Susan wriggling, I was squeezing her too tight–for the longest time. I hadn’t given up hope, but the relief that they were okay… I will never feel anything that powerful again in my lifetime. When we both stopped crying, Busi told me what had happened. She said she had collected Susan from crèche early, and instead of going straight home, had decided to walk to the spaza for sugar. She said the sound of the impact was incredible–they thought at first it must be a bomb. She said she just grabbed Susan and ran as fast as she could away from that sound and away from the explosions. If she had gone home, they would have been killed.

Because our home was gone. Everything we owned had been incinerated.

We stayed in the hall while we waited to be allocated to a shelter. Some of us put up partitions, hanging sheets and blankets from the roof to make makeshift rooms. So many people had lost their homes, but it was the children I felt for the most. The ones who had lost their parents or grandparents. There were so many of them, many of them
amagweja
[refugee children] who had already suffered during the xenophobic attacks four years ago. They had already seen too much.

One boy sticks in my mind. On that first night, I couldn’t sleep. The adrenaline still hadn’t left my body and I suppose I was still dealing with the after-effects of what I had seen that day. I stood up to stretch and I felt the weight of someone staring at me. On a blanket next to where Busi, Susan and I were lying sat a boy. I’d barely noticed him before–I was too caught up in caring for Susan and queuing for food and water. Even in the dark I could see the pain and loneliness shining in his eyes. He was alone on his blanket; I could see no sign of a parent or a grandparent. I wondered why the welfare people had not taken him to the un accompanied children’s section.

I asked him where his mother was. He did not react. I sat next to him and took him in my arms. He leaned against me, but although he didn’t cry or sob, his body was like a dead weight. When I thought he was asleep, I laid him down and crept back to my blanket.

The next day, we heard we were to be moved to a hotel that was donating its rooms to those of us who had lost their homes. I looked around for the boy; I had some idea that perhaps he could come with us, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. We stayed in the hotel for two weeks, and when my sister was offered a job at a large bakery near to Masiphumele, I went to work with her. Again, I was lucky. It is much better than being a domestic. The bakery has a crèche and I can take Susan to work with me every morning.

Later, when all the Americans came out to South Africa to look for that fourth child, an investigator–a Xhosa man, not one of the bounty hunters from overseas–tracked me and Busi down and
asked us if we had seen a particular child in that hall where we were taken. He matched the description of the boy I had seen that first night, but I didn’t tell the man that I’d seen him. I’m not sure why. I think in my heart I knew it would be better for him if he wasn’t found. I could see that the investigator knew I was hiding something, but I still listened to the voice inside me that told me to keep quiet.

And… he may not have even been the boy they were looking for. There were many
intandane
[orphaned children], and the boy did not tell me his name.