The Boy Next Door

by Irene Sabatini

  She has chosen me.

  The first thing she said to me was “Why do you talk like that in front of them? Your Real Voice is nice.”

  Her father is a businessman with very high-up connections. She lives in Morningside in a mansion. She doesn’t know Ndebele, and when I went to her house, I saw the maids exchanging looks when she said something. In Ndebele, one of them said, “Listen to the little white mistress giving us poor Africans orders.”

  She says that white people in Britain smell. They smell because they don’t bath; they don’t bath because it is too cold.

  She told me her secret about her name. She changed it in Britain. Bridget was too common a name; anybody could be a Bridget. Bridgette has personality and they are few and far between.

  I looked at her as if she was mad, and she laughed and said you could do anything you liked overseas.

  8.

  The Chronicle informed Bulawayo that Magistrate Court 101 was packed day in, day out. Even though the accused had admitted his crime, justice should be seen to be done. Everybody wanted to see the youngster. The new telephone at home rang all the time. Mummy would put it down and off it would go again—trrrring, trrrring—all Mummy’s friends wanted to have updates. Being the McKenzies’ neighbors, they thought we had Inside Information. Sometimes Mummy would get a bit annoyed; when she would put the phone down, she would say to the wall, “Does Ma David think that we were cherished friends with them, oh?”

  Sometimes she thought that she was being accused: Why hadn’t she gone out to save Mrs. McKenzie? Why had all the residents of Number 16 Jacaranda Avenue been sleeping so soundly when such a terrible thing was happening at Number 18?

  Her Monday afternoon Bible study group, which was at our house that week, was attended by all its members, even Mrs. Sithole who was recovering from a knee operation. They stayed much longer than usual after they had dissected the Bible, discussing sinners and the devil that could live among us, even next door. Mrs. Khumalo and Mrs. Sithole asked Mummy to show them her beautiful vegetable patch. The rest of the group followed. Prayers were said by the fence, and the house next door was all the time standing there, looking innocent and untouched as though nothing at all had happened there.

  “Guilty,” announced The Chronicle five weeks after the trial began.

  When Mummy was at one of her church meetings, I took out the page from The Chronicle that I had put in my pink handbag. I sat on the bed and looked at his picture for a long time. I put my finger on his bent head and moved it all the way down to his feet. I looked at them. They were bare. Where had they put his tackies? I traced his foot. And then I went back up again and touched his hair.

  I went outside and found Rosanna and Maphosa having a full-blown argument.

  “He will not be hanged,” declared Rosanna. “A white man be allowed to hang from a rope? Never.”

  Maphosa had been sweeping the driveway, and he was leaning against the broom. He picked it up and jabbed it towards Rosanna who was on her way out.

  “You are heavily colonized” was Maphosa’s answer. “White or not white, the law is the same for everyone now. He will not hang because it is relatives he has burnt. It is only a domestic disturbance, a Category B murder. If it was you or me, that white man would be leaving this world, for sure.”

  Rosanna laughed out loud. “What! A white man die because of killing a gardener and a house girl! You are dreaming.”

  Maphosa became very angry. He shouted at Rosanna. He threw the broom at her but she dodged its attack.

  “You are stupid,” he yelled. “An ignoramus. Fighters died during The Struggle to liberate you and look at you, completely colonized. Nobody died so you can go about mawhoring with lipsticks and short skirts and….”

  He saw me and went to the back, muttering to himself things in deep Ndebele.

  When I asked him, Daddy said that there would be no exeution simply because the crime had been committed by a minor.

  “Maphosa must go,” Mummy told Daddy that evening.

  She had said this many other times before.

  “We have done our best,” she continued with her Christian voice. “On my way back from church, I could hear him from all the way down the street, right by the shops. He must go and try something like farming. His people are always calling for him.”

  Then she started humming and singing The Lord Is My Shepherd.

  Last month I heard her tell Aunty Gertrude, who came from Botswana in order to keep an eye on her because she was recovering from the operation, that Daddy felt guilty and sorry. He had fought for the Rhodesians. He was sorry for what had happened to Maphosa. But, she argued, what choice did he have back then? He was a man with a wife and child, responsibilities. He could not just take off to the hills. That was for young men like Maphosa and company who were quite free to do something of that nature. Daddy was a colored and he had to obey the law; he would be imprisoned if he was caught dodging his call-up and it would be very easy to catch him because the post office gave all the details to the army. And anyway, Daddy had never fired a single bullet; he was fixing radios and other equipment. And as for what had happened to Maphosa, that had nothing to do with Daddy; was it Daddy who had stuck his bayonet into Maphosa’s right eye? No, not at all. And knowing Maphosa, it could very well be a self-inflicted injury. She did not trust Maphosa’s heart. Not a single bit. And, what’s more, she strongly suspected him of taking dagga; how come his good eye was so red all the time?

  Aunty Gertrude who is a midwife told her not to worry herself unduly. Things would resolve themselves.

  When I was bringing the tea, she exclaimed, “Oh my goodness me, look at you Lindiwe! Last year you were only so high and now… and what a well-mannered girl you are, too.”

  From the passageway I heard her say to Mummy, “But you must keep an eye on our Lindiwe here.”

  As soon as Aunty Gertrude left, Mummy called me into her room and told me never to converse with Maphosa, never to go into his room, and to exercise modesty at all times.

  The problem was Mummy still believed all the stories that had been in The Chronicle and The Rhodesia Herald during the war about the terrorists.

  I once said “the terrorists” to Mummy and Daddy, and Daddy said, “Nationalists, Lindiwe, Freedom Fighters.”

  Mummy scolded Daddy, “She will go around saying these things.”

  “Independence is on its way,” countered Daddy who did not seem at all concerned. “Mrs. Thatcher and Lord Carrington are making sure of that at Lancaster House; they will make Smith see sense.”

  The Chronicle said that the terrorists did barbaric things to villagers who didn’t support them, like cutting off their noses and ears and burning them in huts while making people sing and dance as the flames rose higher and higher. Daddy said that this was just Rhodesian Propaganda.

  At the height of the war, Uncle Silius managed to make it out of Gwayi communal lands, which are over one hundred kilometers from Bulawayo. Two of his sons had gone to the hills and he had come to town to try and find a job. He said Smith’s soldiers were doing terrible, terrible things down there: villagers were being herded into camps so that crops and cattle were dying in the lands because there was no one to look after them; pregnant women’s stomachs were being slit open and their babies bayoneted; young boys were being used as mine detectors in front of army vehicles, and other kinds of things were being done to young girls, who were kidnapped when they went out to fetch water, which burnt up their insides and destroyed their womanhood for life.

  Mummy didn’t like too much talk about the war. She said you never knew who could be listening and on which side of the fence they might be. People had long memories. When Daddy once came back from his call-up, standing in full view outside our gate in Thorngrove, wearing his uniform, they had a big fight. Even here in Baysview, where it was all quiet, anything could happen. Garden boys and garden girls could turn out to be related to so-and-so, who had been out in the bush, up in the hills over
in Mozambique, and come victory, well, better safe than sorry….

  Mummy is quite sure that Maphosa has an AK-47 hidden under his room and that one of these days…. Everybody had been talking about how the boys had not handed in all their weapons to the British and Australian soldiers at the assembly points like it had been agreed at Lancaster House. The events at Entumbane had shown that this was the case. There were countless weapons and grenades in the hands of former fighters, and there was talk that arms caches had been found in some farms owned by Nkomo.

  Trouble seemed to be fermenting again.

  9.

  After the fire and the arrest, Maphosa tried to reason with Mphiri. I had just come back from netball practice at school when I saw Maphosa leaning over the fence. I stood around the corner, watching. I picked up Roxy and held him to keep him from barking; he started licking my face.

  “Baba Mphiri, baba Mphiri!” Maphosa called.

  After a while Mphiri hobbled over to the gap in the fence, which the McKenzies were meant to have fixed a long time ago. Maphosa had brought along a stool. He pushed it through the gap. Mphiri sat down and waited for Maphosa’s lecture.

  “Now, mudala. You can finally go back home and rest. You are free.”

  Mphiri whose hair is white, white said, “No, umntanami, I am quite happy here. The young master will come back. He is a good young man. He will come home again I am sure.”

  I could feel the strength of Mphiri’s faith in his old voice.

  Maphosa raised his voice. “What are you saying, mudala? That boy is in jail. He will stay there till he dies. Your children are waiting for you. You must go back to your homestead to share your wisdom.”

  Mphiri begged, “No, no, my son, do not be angry, but you are wrong. My children do not have need for me. I am only a nuisance, an extra mouth to feed. No, it is good and proper that I stay here. I will tend the vegetables. Do you see this jacket I am wearing? The young master gave it to me before all the problems. Brand-new. All the way from South Africa.”

  Maphosa kept on arguing and reasoning and arguing, and Mphiri started weeping against the fence, asking Maphosa to please forgive and understand him.

  Even though I was very hungry and dying for the crunchy peanut butter sandwiches I always have after practice, I stayed where I was. My grumbling stomach disturbed Roxy, but luckily when he struggled out of my arms, he ran off to the other side of the house. My face was wet with his spit.

  I saw Daddy come out of the workshop. He was holding a part he was fixing and he was obviously annoyed.

  “Maphosa, leave the old man alone,” he said.

  Daddy waited until Maphosa moved away from the fence.

  “Better in the bush,” Maphosa muttered.

  Mummy, who had come out of the house, heard him. “If that’s the case,” she said with her hands crossed, “feel free to go. The bush is waiting.”

  “No, no, Mama,” Maphosa said. “It is not like that. It is just that matters were simple there. Kill and be killed. One settler, one bullet. Now people are even angry that they are liberated and can make their own decisions. They are grumbling that the white man took care of them and now they are being left to fend for themselves.”

  He stood there looking at Mummy, and then he raised his hand and started rubbing his bad eye.

  I went inside the house and thought about Maphosa, how annoyed he is by the fact that white people have been given the vote.

  “We did not fight for one vote, one settler,” I had heard him argue with Rosanna.

  Daddy told me in private that this was not strictly true. White people got much more than one vote each: Lancaster House had awarded them twenty seats in parliament even though there were only about twenty-nine thousand registered voters in the white electoral roll. The over two million voters in the common electoral roll only got eighty seats. And whites could be registered as voters in both rolls.

  As far as Maphosa is concerned, all the leftovers should go back to Britain; there is no such thing as a white African.

  10.

  Mphiri’s faith has been rewarded. Over a year and a half has passed and Ian McKenzie is going to be released. The Chronicle says that the verdict has been quashed because of a successful appeal. New evidence was presented to the court concerning the validity of the confession.

  Maphosa and Rosanna argue about this, too. Rosanna says that definitely he will not be released because he is a murderer and he has killed a white woman; Maphosa says once again Rosanna reveals her unending ignorance: that boy will definitely be released because he is a murderer of a white woman. It will make white people feel very confused about the government and its intentions; they will not know which way the wind is blowing. “Let them start murdering each other,” says Maphosa. “Maybe then we can have our land at last.”

  Daddy says that prison can reform some people; it can make them realize the error of their ways so that they make amends.

  Mummy looks at him and says all she knows is that now we will have to live with a murderer in our midst and then she starts humming. This is Mummy’s way of telling Daddy “I told you so.” She has been urging him for a long time now to start looking for a new house in one of the better suburbs. A better suburb to Mummy is one where there are higher quality white people and no apostolics. She wants to move further north. But Daddy says that we can’t afford to move; the rates alone will kill us. Mummy doesn’t believe him and thinks that this is yet another example of Daddy’s tightness with money when it concerns her.

  After dinner I go to my room and slowly move the dressing table. I remove the lighter that I have taped to the back of the mirror. I sit down on my bed and look at it in my palm. I am breathing deeply, in and out, like when Dr. Esat asks me to as he moves the stethoscope around on my chest. I close my eyes, which makes me feel dizzy.

  Roxy found the lighter somewhere in the vegetable patch. It had clinked on the driveway, and I was surprised by that because Roxy usually had a poor lizard dangling from his teeth, which would only make a dull slapping sound when Roxy flung it on the stone slabs. I stooped down, picked up the object. It was wet with saliva and dirt. And then I ran water over it and I saw what it was.

  It had been months since the sentencing. He was in jail now. I chanted the old playground claim, finders, keepers; losers, weepers, over and over again, but the more I held the lighter in my hands the more it became what it was, evidence. And I had it.

  He came today.

  We all saw him.

  He stood outside the gate and looked up at the house.

  He stood there just looking.

  Mphiri came out and opened the gate.

  Maphosa said that there will never be peace now.

  Rosanna, who is pregnant, was quiet.

  Mummy said he looked like a criminal. I didn’t think that she was right about that.

  * * *

  He helped us push start the car. The Cortina stalled again at the gate. I got out of the car and saw him standing by his gate, looking. I felt shy to have my back turned from him, my head bent down, my bottom up, straining my weight against the car.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” he said.

  I hadn’t even heard him walking up.

  Our hands were side by side.

  The car finally started and I got inside. Daddy leaned his head out of the window and thanked him.

  “It’s nothing, Mr. Bishop. Glad to help.”

  In the car, Daddy looked at his windscreen mirror and sighed. I was thinking of his hands. I was thinking of the lighter in them. The lighter that said Rhodesian Army on it. Hot and burning.

  When I came home, I took out my diary, which was wedged in between the mattress and the headboard. I had bought it in March in Kingstons at half price with my pocket money. It had a picture of a ballerina on the cover and a lock and key. I found the date and put a big X in the space for writing. I counted; it was twenty-one days since he had been released. Then I locked it up again and put the key back in my penc
il case. I wasn’t supposed to have any secrets from my parents.

  And then I took the lighter out from behind the mirror. I stood in the room trying to think of another place. I thought that maybe I would put it in my pink handbag, which was too childish for me now and which I kept hanging in the cupboard. I was opening the cupboard door when I heard Mummy’s footsteps, and I shoved it under my pillow.

  “Lindiwe,” Mummy says. “Our interaction with that boy must be kept to the strictest minimum. If he comes here when there are no adults around, you must not let him in. I have already informed Rosanna and Maphosa. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mummy, I understand.”

  Mummy is now treasurer of the Women’s Group. Monday and Wednesday afternoons she is away at meetings.

  Mphiri says that the young master is sleeping in the boy’s kaya with him. Mphiri scratches his head and says that this is not right. The young master sleeps right on the floor without even a mattress. He sleeps on the grass mat. Maphosa says that maybe now Mphiri will see reason and go back home. Even white people are afraid of Amadhlozi, the spirits who want to avenge a grave wrongdoing. Rosanna does not believe Mphiri. A white person would never do that. She cannot even imagine them using the same toilet as Mphiri. Mphiri is just getting too old. White people need electricity. She cannot even think of a white man sitting down to light a paraffin stove.

  As the days and weeks went by, things remained normal; everyone seemed to just accept his presence. Nobody made any comments about him, and nothing bad seemed to be happening to anyone. Maybe Mrs. McKenzie’s spirit wasn’t interested in doing anyone any harm. Maybe the heat had dried it up, sapped away all its energy (and anger), like it was doing to everything else.