28 Boys

by Ashleigh Giannoccaro

  The world moves around me in slow motion and the sound is gone as my heartbeat thunders inside my head. I feel my eyeballs fill with blood and my knees hit the ground as I fall hard to my knees.

  The message is very clear. I crossed a line.

  Martin holds out a hand as my blurred vision returns, he pulls me to my feet. The peace I had found is shattered, the family I found gone, and my heart is broken.

  “Francis, I have been phoning you,” he says softly while he ushers me to the pavement outside my house.

  “My phone is inside. I was working with Eiran and the boys, we had a job.” I am pretty sure Martin knows what we do, he’s as corrupt as the next cop in this place. “Where is Engela, is she in there?” I stand and try walk to the house, but his arm across my chest stops me. “Did the ambulance take her?”

  He pushes me back against the low wall and I stand and scan the people coming in and out of the house.

  “No, she’s at work. We contacted her boss. They have gone to get her and there is a police car waiting to bring her here.” I hear him swallow, it’s loud. “They waited for her to go. They wanted to send a message to both of you.” His angry eyes are brimming with tears. “I told you to leave them alone, Francis.”

  But I couldn’t leave them alone. I tried, and I failed.

  “Don’t put this on me, Martin. This was Nathaniel, I was finished killing people.”

  I was finished, but someone is going to die for this.

  An officer calls him from their front gate, making hand signals for him to come over there. “Kom (come), I don’t care who it’s on Francis. A child just died.”

  He starts walking across the street and I follow him, crossing over the line they drew between us. There was never a line separating me and them. They are my family.

  Mine.

  Every step makes my knees weaker, as we go through the small metal gate and up the front steps. Tears pour from my eyes, soaking my face in the pain that is ripping through me. I have seen more dead bodies than a morgue worker in my life, but not one of them prepared me for what waited inside the house across the road.

  Red. The floor of the entrance is crimson with the pool and spatter of blood, on the floor and white walls. The blue floral of her dress sticks out below the cleaning overcoat she wears when she washes the floors, and one of her sheepskin slippers is off.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twintig. Een en twintig. Twee en Twintig. Drie en Twintig. Vier en Twintig. Fyf en Twintig. Ses en twintig. Sewe en Twintig.

  I count every bullet hole in her body and the message becomes very clear to me. Agt en Twintig. (Twenty-eight.)

  They only needed one.

  But, twenty-eight bullet holes have broken her into pieces, that I can no longer see her smiling face even if I close my eyes. It’s all red. Pieces of her brain and bones are littering the floor around her as a policeman pushes me to walk around the crime scene.

  I clean up messes like this. That’s my job, yet all I want to do is throw myself on the floor in all of it and hold her. To thank her for forgiving me, and hug the woman who saved me from myself with a meal on a paper plate, but she’s gone, and in that mess somewhere so is my heart.

  I keep thinking this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair – they should have killed me, she never did anything wrong. She loved me like a mother – is a mother’s love wrong? How can this even be happening? Why? Why them?

  The answer is you Francis — because of you.

  I hear Eiran calling my name from outside the open door. I wish they would close it, I don’t want the world to see her like this. I don’t want Engela to get here and see that first, she can’t see them this way.

  “Martin.” I call him, and he turns to me as we walk towards the lounge where the TV still blares. “Don’t let them bring her here, it will kill her. Take them away first. Asseblief. Please.”

  I beg him not to make her see this. He nods and sends a text message.

  Dan’s toys are all over the carpet where he would have played this morning while the cartoons were on. He might not have had my blood, but the little boy had become my son, and his light shone on all of us in this house — a blessing in the blackness.

  I pick up his favorite toy, the little stuffed airplane, and hold it to my face, smelling his baby smell, remembering his giggles.

  I am a criminal, a gangster, a murderer and a horrible human being, but that little boy made me a father, and no father deserves to look at the lifeless body of his child. No matter how bad you are, there are some things no one deserves.

  Every step closer to our small bedroom, my body shakes more. I know what is in there, but it doesn’t stop me from hoping that maybe this is a bad dream and I’ll wake up before we go through that door.

  I focus on the word POLICE on the back of Martin’s uniform, as we move through the other police officers and paramedics. Everything but that word is a blurry fuzz that I don’t even see.

  “Are you sure, Francis?” he turns and asks me, when we stop just outside the room.

  I can’t answer him, so I nod. The tears have dried up and I am numb to the world around me. Eiran is behind me now. I feel him put a hand on my shoulder and squeeze, but I don’t hear the words he says.

  Because I am not here.

  This cannot be real.

  Dan cannot be gone.

  The little music box next to his cot still plays Twinkle Little Star, the metallic notes ring in my ears, a sound that will haunt me every time I close my eyes after this. Because when I open them, my beautiful little boy is lying on a bloodstained sheet, with his bum in the air. Exactly the way he sleeps every night, only now there is a bullet hole in the back of his head. I am quietly thankful that he didn’t suffer and was taken swiftly, but it does nothing to ease the agony that is tearing me apart.

  Rage and revenge start to fill the numb void as I allow myself a moment to say goodbye to the only innocent person I ever knew. He was an angel and God needed him home.

  My body is overcome by shaking and I put my hand on his little back, only his chest doesn’t go up and down and his warm body is cold and still.

  Dan is gone – and so am I.

  Martin turns the music off and pushes me to sit on the end of our bed. It smells like Engela and baby power in here, it always does. Eiran stands in front of me and bends to look me in my eyes, even he has tears in his.

  “I didn’t kiss him goodbye, last night I didn’t kiss him.” I didn’t get a last kiss, I didn’t say goodbye to my boy.

  “I will make this right, if it’s the last thing I do Francis. I will do this for you.”

  I don’t want him to. I want to kill Nathaniel with my own two fucking hands. That’s his son. What sort of a monster does that?

  “You are not going back to prison, Francis. You’ve earned this freedom and I won’t let you do that.” I don’t want to be free without them. “Engela will need you now.”

  My own heartache allowed me to forget about her for a moment. She won’t need me, she will hate me. This is because of me and she won’t even want to look at me now.

  I have lost everything.

  “Can I go now, Martin?” Suddenly I cannot bare it any longer. I want to get out.

  I want to forget it all and I can’t do that in here. My body moves on it’s own because Lord knows I have no strength left as I hurl myself out of the room, through the back door and around the side of the house.

  Heaving as I try to get air into my lungs, I run back to my house and collapse on the threadbare couch where I sat the day I came home.

  If this is the price of my freedom I am not willing to pay it.

  This isn’t fair. This is war, and we became the innocent victims because we loved.

  “We took Engela to the police station, until they can take them away.” Martin talks to me where I sit in the dark front room of my house. “Do you want to come
? I will drive you there?”

  I can’t move from the spot where I am.

  “She won’t want to see me Martin, this is my fault.” I look at him. He looks like he is fifty years old, not thirty. “I will stay here.”

  “Sy het niemand anders, Francis.” She’s got no one else, Francis. Better no one, than me. “You can’t be sure she won’t want you there, even if she doesn’t want you, she needs you.”

  When I don’t answer, Eiran steps into the room and says, “I will go with you Martin, give him time. Dis beter so.” It’s better that way.

  Thankful for his offer I just close may eyes, and go back to last night where we were all asleep together, safe in our idea that loving each other was enough to keep us safe.

  They leave me alone. The house is full of people but none of them come near me.

  Alone. This is how I am meant to be.

  16

  Engela

  when a bad person is better than no person

  When a policeman fetches you from work in the middle of your shift, you know something terrible has happened. When he won’t tell you why he fetched you, you know someone died. I have called Francis’s phone nonstop since I was told I had to go with the officer from work.

  This is all my fault. I should have listened when I was warned. My stubbornness caused this. The defiance in me that just wouldn’t let it go, that little spark that ignited a flame and set me ablaze — I should have ignored it.

  Francis was always going to be a bad idea, but he was the best thing to happen to us since my brother died. I felt him leaving in the middle of the night, his warm strong body was suddenly missing beside me and the bed turned cool, where it had been cozy with his body heat.

  The front door lock clicked closed and I remembered he didn’t come kiss us goodnight. I wonder if he knew something was going to happen to him, maybe he just couldn’t say goodbye.

  I’m crying, for so many reasons, and the silent man beside me isn’t very comforting. The blue flashing glow from the lights on the car roof hypnotizes me, and I get lost in the recesses of the few good memories I have.

  “Francis, passop (careful). He’s too little for that.” I told him after church on Sunday as he hurled my little boy up in the air above his head.

  Dan’s laugher bubbled from his belly every time he flew up, and when Francis caught him he would cling on and snuggle in the safety of the man who had become his father.

  I loved Sundays now, and I would kneel in that church and pray every week that things would stay just like this.

  Carrying my son over to me, Francis pulls me into a little group hug and says, “I’d never drop him, I will always keep him, and you, safe.”

  With a kiss on the forehead he is gone again, flying the little one around like an airplane as Ma and I finish tidying up the tea tables. When we are done, Dan is strapped into his pushchair and we walk home, together, to our side of the street.

  Dan and Francis have a snooze on the couch watching cartoons, and me and Ma cook lunch. This is how life is now, as close to perfect as you can find in this hell.

  We love each other. It’s not like you see in the movies, all sex and passion, it’s soft and warm and gentle. When he kisses me it’s because he loves me, and he has no other way to show me.

  We hold hands, and laugh and play silly games. It’s as if finding each other, we found the childhood we lost and now we get to share with Dan, and live it this time.

  In a way we are too young for sex, so it doesn’t even matter. I won’t lie and say there aren’t days where I just want to touch him, to feel that, that little bit more, but more would mean losing this.

  And this is worth too much.

  We go past our street on the way to the police station. There is a crowd of people where it’s blocked off. My eyes scan them, looking for Ma or Francis — for anyone I know. But, we are moving too fast. All I catch is a sea of angry people, crying and screaming at the police.

  Nothing good happened there. I feel it inside me that today is going to be the second worst day of my life.

  When we eventually make it to the police station I’m escorted inside, to a small office where there are thousands of docket files piled up on a desk, and the dust is thick on the furniture. I’ve been in here before.

  I know this is the Captain’s office. I sit here, swinging my legs, wondering how many of those case files will ever be closed. Most of them won’t.

  When the door opens behind me I jump and spin to see who it is. A female officer comes in with cup of tea. The smell makes me gag. I don’t drink tea, so I put it down on the desk and she sits next to me.

  “They asked me to wait with you, make sure you are okay?”

  I’m not okay.

  “Okay.” I just stare ahead of me and wait.

  Silently I accept the fact that he is gone, and the childhood we just found again has been stolen from me. Despair grips me from inside and I feel it strangling my heart.

  The pain becomes physically impossible to ignore, and I crumple over onto myself and try cry quietly so the stranger beside me can’t see the agony I am in.

  Her hand on my back just feels fake and unwanted, but I haven’t got the will to shove it off. “Shhh.”

  Her attempt at making me feel better fails dismally, and my quiet cries become sobs that convulse out of me. I can’t breathe through the loss, emptiness has seeped into the place where I had finally found comfort.

  Martin’s voice breaks through as I wallow in the grief, curled into a ball on the chair in that musty office. “Jy kan gaan.” You can go.

  I feel her let go and I lift my crying eyes to see his face stained with tears that mirror my own. He looks so tired, so sad and so old, he’s only thirty, but right now he looks eighty-five.

  Sitting beside me Martin takes my hands in his, they are hot and sweaty. “Engela.” He can’t look at me.

  “I know he’s gone. I know it’s Francis. Just tell me what happened. It was Nathaniel wasn’t it?” I’m shivering now, my whole body vibrating with defeat .

  “That would be so much easier than this, Engela. It’s not Francis. It’s your …” he doesn’t need to finish.

  Ma.

  “Ma?” I breathe in and hold it. I don’t want to live in this life. I’ll just suffocate in this moment.

  Martin nods his head yes. “— And…”

  Oh God No. No No No NO!

  “I’m so sorry, Engela.” He can barely speak through his own tears, “I’m sorry but they took Dan too. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do or say, I am sorry I couldn’t keep them safe.”

  Suddenly I hate him. He was supposed to be the one that made a difference out of the four of them, the one to be a cop and save us all. Yet here he is destroying my entire life — I hate him.

  There are no tears for this. I died with my son.

  So now there is just nothing.

  I sit and stare into his eyes, and all that was me is gone. Emptied of everything that filled my heart, I cannot even weep for my mother and child.

  After a long silence I ask, “Where is Francis?”

  He looks down at the floor before he answers me. “He’s at home, he couldn’t face you now. Hy is gebreek. Hy voel dat dit sy skuld is, ek is jammer Engela. He het nie gedink jy wil hom sien nie.” He’s so broken, he thinks this is all his fault. He didn’t think you’d want to see him.

  Abandoned in my time of need, as always.

  “There is only one of us to blame, Martin. I should have listened when I was warned. I know better.”

  Behind him, through the open door, Eiran walks in. He’s not in fancy clothes, but just nice jeans and a leather jacket. I see him trying not to look at me. I know he’s here because Francis isn’t. That’s how their stupid brotherhood works, someone had to come.

  “Take me home. I want to see it, I want to see them.” Anger replaces the nothingness of moments before.

  “They’ve been taken away for now, Engela. You can’t go home
yet, it’s a crime scene. Seeing them is not a good idea, she isn’t … Ma isn’t how you remember her.”

  I want to see them, I want to say goodbye. I need to know what happened.

  “Asseblief Please Martin, dis my kind en my Ma.” That’s my mother and my child.

  He looks over his shoulder to Eiran for help, and he steps further into the room. “Engela, môre sal ek jou vat. Ek stem saam met Martin. I will take you tomorrow, Engela. I agree with Martin, that we should go tomorrow. Wag. Wait. This is a shock, and seeing them is not going to help now.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Huh? Just fucking sit here in this office? I have nowhere to go, I have fucking nothing else. They were all I had!”

  I launch myself at him and pound my tiny fists against his chest, while hot, angry tears, pour out of my eyes.

  This isn’t fair.

  Eiran just puts his arms around me, stopping my punches and holding me still. He lets me cry and yell, and call him names he doesn’t deserve.

  When I stop and just breathe, he says, “You can come stay with me. It’s safer anyway. Martin will let us know when you can see Dan.” I can’t even fight, I’m so broken inside. “When it’s okay to go home, I will drive you back.”

  I step back, sniffing snot blocking my nose, and drying my wet eyes on my sleeve.

  “Martin, can I take her now? Do you need anything?”

  Martin shakes his head and comes to hug me. I go stiff, because he was supposed to help me, stop this mess from happening — that was the deal. He didn’t keep his word.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, letting me go.

  Eiran carries my handbag and guides me outside to his swanky car. I have the sensation that I am inside a movie on the TV.

  He flicks on the lights in a luxury apartment. I have never been inside a house like this, it looks like places in the magazine we read at the airport newsstand on our breaks.

  He puts my bag down on a table by the door, with his keys and wallet.