28 Boys

by Ashleigh Giannoccaro

  Francis comes in the door behind him with a smile on his face, and says, “Die varke, hulle sal enige iets eet.” These pigs will eat anything. He comes to me and lifts me off my feet in a hug, and gives me a kiss that shows just how much he missed me, “Dankie Engela, you didn’t have to clean up this pigsty.” He puts me back down on my feet, but my knees feel weak from the way my heart beats when he holds me like that. “And you don’t have to feed them, they can go mess somewhere else.”

  He gives Donnie a ‘get the fuck out’ look before he kisses me again, a little harder this time.

  “They cleaned my house, didn’t they? What if I want to feed them?” I ask him, because I know that’s what they do.

  Him and these men clean up when people die. Eiran said they made sure it was okay for me to go home, that they took care of it so I didn’t have to see it when I went home. They took care of me without even knowing me, even if I didn’t realize it while I was doing it, this is a thank you for that.

  Even more than that, it was gift. I needed this to take control of my mind and focus my thoughts on everything that I am feeling, and I found it cleaning up after them. I know what I want to do, and where I want to do it. Francis is the only family I have left and no matter what he did before I know who he is now, and I want to be with him.

  Hugging in the kitchen, Donnie hasn’t gotten the get out hint, probably because I said food and he’s a man. I smile at Francis and kiss his cheek, he smells like sweat and hard work, but also something a bit gross.

  “Go shower, I will find something between our houses to cook for all of you.” I pull my nose up because the smell is quite offensive now. “Jy stink, Francis. Sies.” You stink, Francis, yuck. He smells himself and steps away from me. “We can finish that conversation after dinner tonight.” I look down, afraid of his reaction. What if he has changed his mind while he was out, what if Eiran told him it was a bad idea?

  “Okay.” He looks behind him to see Donnie smiling at us like an idiot, “You,” he points at him. “You get up and help her. Sy is nie jou diensmeisie nie, lui gat.” She’s not your maid, lazy ass.

  Francis looks at me with a soft smile, shakes his head and goes to shower. I hear the yells and fights over the bathroom and him kicking someone else out. The house is small for all of them to share, but they seem to make it work.

  “Donnie, go over to my house and bring me the mince meat out the freezer. There are about four packets, you can bring them all, and the spice rack off the counter by the sink. And a big pot, it’s in the cupboard next to the stove.” He jumps up, the prospect of food has him eager to please. “And tell whoever is whining like that about the bathroom, they can go use my shower, but they better leave it clean.”

  We eat. It’s not a fancy meal, but everyone has a warm plate of food and we all find a place to sit down in the small house. It feels like a home with all these boys eating, talking and laughing. The sound of their laughter makes me forget my sadness for awhile, even if it’s only a few minutes, I feel happy for those few.

  They are all different, yet they all found their way here through their past. Most of them have pasts like Francis, ugly and dirty, colored with blood and crime, yet like this they are just a bunch of kids having fun.

  I sit next to Francis on the couch facing my house, the stoep light is on and it looks so far away. I don’t want to go home tonight. If I go home I will see the empty cot and my Ma’s empty chair, and I will cry again. Tonight I don’t want to cry, I want to laugh at these silly boys and take care of them.

  Francis puts his plate on the side table and an arm around me, pulling me against him so we are right beside one another. “Dankie.” Thank you.

  He thanks me for the meal and we sit here listening to stories and laughing at bad jokes. I climb onto his lap to make room for the late arrivals to sit and eat, someone went to buy beers at the shebeen (tavern) and they are all getting merry.

  I remember a time when our parents sat like this and we played in this same backyard, me and Felicity, and the boys. The braai (barbecue) would be flaming in the back, and Danial and Francis would play soccer. Eiran was always the goalie and Martin the self appointed referee, he hasn’t changed much, but the rest of them have. We all have.

  I can’t remember a time in my life when I felt this way, like I belonged somewhere, that I had a purpose in this world. Where I wasn’t afraid of losing something — because I have nothing left to lose. I know Francis isn’t going to be here forever, I know that tomorrow is never promised, and I just want to live in the time we have here, just like this — happy. I will always be sad for what I have lost, no mother loses a child and comes out the same on the other side, but my son’s life wasn’t for nothing. It was a high price to pay but I know I am free from the numbers now. I have turned the page and started a new story.

  My Ma was never the same after my brother died, but she taught me to forgive, and in that lesson I found Francis, and he found home.

  “Do you want to go home, Engela?” Francis asks as he puts down an empty beer bottle, his eyes are bright and a little shiny with tipsiness.

  “I am home, Francis.” I answer him as I get up and start collecting the empty bottles. I just cleaned this place, they are not going to let it get that bad again.

  “Don’t clean Engela, you aren’t the maid, please.”

  He grabs my hand to stop me, but I pull it away and carry the empties to the kitchen and grab another refuse bag. He follows me. There are three guys at the kitchen table laughing at stupid videos on their cell phones and the back door is open; the breeze blowing in is cooling the house down. He takes the bag from me and tosses it on the table between them.

  “Maak skoon julle.” Clean up you lot.

  I shake my head, and Francis picks me up and carries me outside. The backyard is a mixture of red sand and tufts of grass. The old tree is long dead, and only the trunk and branches look sad in the moonlight.

  He puts me down on the plastic lawn chair and pulls another one close to me. I am sure they have stolen all these mismatched lawn chairs from the whole neighborhood, there seem to be way too many of them.

  “You said we could talk?” There is a naughty spark to his voice, and I wonder if he is being serious.

  “I did, you want to talk now?”

  When he smiles like that I don’t want to talk, I just want to kiss his full lips and taste the beer and cigarettes on his breath. Police sirens sound in the distance and I can hear the popping of gunshots on the wind as it kicks up dust at our feet.

  Biting the inside of my cheek I just stare at him. The glow of the outside light shines like a halo behind him, it highlights his shaved head and I can see the lines of his tattoos through his t-shirt. I can see good and evil before me, and instead of fearing the monster I want to make love to the angel who saved me.

  “Maybe we can talk later?” he says, as he reaches out to touch my mouth with his thumb. “We can just do that thing where we feel good now?”

  I do feel good, so good.

  Francis kisses me. He tastes like he smells, of beer and smokes, and his hands pull in the knots of my kroesie hair when he holds me still so he can look into my eyes with his black ones.

  I see beauty in his darkness and the softness beneath the hardened man, he lets me see it when we are close to each other.

  “Ek is lief vir jou Engela, en liefde is die een ding in die lewe waarvoor ek bang is.” I love you Engela, and love is the one thing in life I am afraid of.

  Francis speaks to me between kisses, and he confesses his love and his fears to me here in the backyard where we once played hide and seek, where we cried over skinned knees and tattle-tailed to Ma when the boys kissed us on the cheeks. But. Now tonight his kisses are welcome, his strong arms around me aren’t a game of catch, he’s caught me and stopped me from falling.

  “Let’s go inside, to the room. Where we can be alone.”

  I point to the kitchen window where his friends are watching us, laugh
ing. It makes me uncomfortable for them to see us this way, to them he isn’t soft. He is the boss, the man in charge, and looking like a schoolboy kissing in the backyard leaves him exposed, and I know he won’t like it.

  I see his face change, the lines on his forehead crease more and he glares at them. His jaw tenses and I see his fists balling up, he doesn’t like being laughed at, he’s used to getting respect.

  “Ek sal julle donner!” I'll kick your asses! he yells at them, and they quickly scatter out the kitchen and the light flicks off, making it darker out here, hiding us in the shadows.

  “Kom, ons ingaan.” Come, let’s go in. He stands and holds out a hand to me.

  As we walk into the house the guys scramble out of his way, they still fear the man. The passage light doesn’t work and it’s dark inside the house. Our feet thump along the old, exposed wooden floors.

  Francis slams his door shut behind us, sending a very clear message to the rest of the house — they have crossed a line and shouldn’t dare cross any further.

  “Maybe we should go to your house?” he says, between kisses and tugging at my shirt hem, trying to remove it.

  “I don’t want to be there Francis, it’s sad there. I don’t want to feel sad tonight. Remember, you said we could just feel good.”

  When my fingers run over the raised scars where I think he must have been stabbed, his breath whistles between his teeth and he tries to stop me. We haven’t done this before. There was always the baby in the room or my Ma next door. I want to touch him, see him, and feel him.

  I want to be close to him.

  “I can’t do this with them in the house. They are listening, I know they are.”

  I need to make him forget them and think about us, because right now I need this. I need to be close to someone. I want to be selfish. I need him. I know we can’t have sex, I’m actually okay with that, but I want him to see that that doesn’t mean we can’t be close, that we can’t feel good. Because, we can.

  “Vergeet hulle, dis net ek en jy in die kamer, Francis.” Forget about them, it’s just you and me in this bedroom, Francis.

  Standing on my tiptoes I peel off my shirt, so my breasts rub against him. I kiss his jawline. When he slips his hands around my waist I know I have won half the fight.

  “Jy is so sag, you are so soft, I love the way you feel Engela. It’s long since I had something soft in my life. Prison is a hard place to survive. I am afraid I will wake up and this won’t be real. That there will be bars and concrete floors around me. I want you, but am so afraid of what having me in your life means for you.”

  The roughness of his fingers slides across my skin as he slowly traces his way up and down my sides. He deliberately avoids being sexual, he avoids my breasts and anything that might lead us down that path.

  “Sex was never something nice for me, it wasn’t special or important. And in jail it was horrible, painful, and something I want to forget. I am not gay, but the last twelve years I had sex with men, not because I was attracted to them or desired them, but because I needed to do it to survive – to live. I did it to kill them, Engela. I told you I won’t kill you.”

  The bitter agony in his strained voice, as he opens up to me more, causes a new ache in me. Sex was never nice for me either.

  It was mostly being shoved up again the nearest solid surface and rutted until Nathaniel came. If I was really lucky it would be in his bed, or on the couch. There was no love or passion, just his need to get off.

  “Engela, I don’t know what to do with a woman. Don’t get me wrong, please, ek wil nie met manne lê nie, maar ek weet nie hoe om met jou te wees nie. I don't want to shag men, but I don’t know how to be with you. My body wants to do things and I don’t want to be in a situation that we can’t control.”

  “Francis, you think sex was magic for me? Ek was ’n nommer hoer voor Nathaniel. I was a number whore before Nathaniel. Even then, he passed me around his friends. This isn’t about sex! This is about being intimate, feeling good with you, and maybe – just maybe, having something like real love between us. I know you are not gay. The way your dick acts when I touch you tells me all I need to know. But, I need to be able to touch you, to make you feel good. And I need you to do the same. I need some good in my life, because fuck me it’s been filled with enough bad. Fucking trust me. I am trusting you with my life! I think you can trust me with your penis.”

  I grab him by his dick, over his trousers. I want him to know that I am serious, that even if we can’t have sex there has to be this connection, because I can’t just ignore what I feel.

  I won’t.

  There might not be a tomorrow for either of us. We have to make the most of, and treasure, every moment together.

  He relaxes and I undo his black leather belt, open the fly of his jeans, and feel the cotton of his plain briefs. I know what they are as I have been doing his washing for a while now.

  I notice his rigidity. He freezes up and every muscle in his body is tense, pulled tight, making him like a marble statue.

  “Take your shirt off, Francis.”

  I know his tattooed chest embarrasses him. He tries to shield it from me all the time; he’s shy about being exposed to me. Changing in the bathroom, sleeping with a top on, small things I’ve noticed, but I want him to let it go. I want him to live, not in the little box prison created for him, but here in the real world with me.

  He may be out of jail, but Francis isn’t free yet.

  He pulls the cotton tee over his head and holds it in his balled fist, and when I look at his face I see how lost he is.

  “Do you want me to stop?” I ask.

  Shaking his head he closes his eyes. The stars on his shoulders give away just how high his rank in the gang was. “Generaal.” General, I say as I trace the lines of the raised skin, each point of each star.

  The hands in a twenty-eight salute over his heart, which is jackhammering against ribs. I feel the warmth of his pulse as it thumps against me.

  “Saluut.” Salute. The greeting of the gang is etched on his body, with the two and the eight between them. There are lots or words, all molded together, squared and squeezed into the gaps between the images.

  ‘My heart beats three times a year,’ is bolder than the others.

  It tells his life, where he came from, and how he got into the gang.

  Three beats is a violent thing to have on your body. Someone died for that line of ink. The words blood and death are inked on him in many places, and as I look at it, the violent history of the man comes alive before me. I want to go back in time and erase these marks, the vuil bladsye, dirty pages, and make him clean again.

  Like he was when we were children. When I see him like this, all of him, I want to know about it. I want him to tell me about the last twelve years.

  “Stop Engela,” he says, before I can say anything more. “Moenie.” Don’t.

  I see the shame on his face when he looks away from my eyes.

  “I know who you are, Francis.”

  I guide his face back, so I can see him. He kisses me. I know it’s to distract me from exploring the story etched on his skin.

  This time we don’t stop. His hands take their time to touch me everywhere, and when he pulls down my panties and leaves them on the floor, there is nothing between us.

  He sees me, finally as a woman and not the little girl he’s afraid to touch. There is desire in those eyes while he touches me, not like the men on the bus, but tenderly.

  We stumble backwards to the single bed, the pine frame makes a cracking objection when we tumble onto it. His belt buckle jingles. He still won’t take his pants off, but now he’s finally letting go.

  Every stroke of his finger, each kiss of his lips makes me wish for a different ending to this. Sex and love are not the same thing; not even close. With nothing but his hands and lips, Francis makes love to me on this narrow bed, made up with clean sheets from my mother’s linen cupboard.

  Eventually he allows me
to touch him, to feel how physically hard he is, how much he wants me – that our need is matched.

  Slowly, when he’s distracted, touching me, I stroke him up and down.

  His muffled moans into my mouth tell me how good it must feel for him. When his dick jerks and I know how close he is, I feel him trying to pull away. I know he wants to stop me, but I’m not stopping this time.

  I grab his shirt, which is caught up between us on the bed where he left it. His skin turns hot and the muscles in his neck strain. I watch the ripples as his body is about to convulse, his obstinance to stop himself keeping him on that edge while his fingers stroke and penetrate me.

  His breaths come out as whispers of love and confessions of fear on my skin, when he blurts out loudly for me to, “Stop!”

  I don’t. I keep going and slide his shirt between us, to stop the mess as he cums. The growling moan, and his teeth sinking into my collarbone, are a sweeter sound than any ‘I love you’ could be.

  “Engela.”

  His body is shaking and he won’t look at me.

  I wipe him clean, throw the shirt away onto the floor, and let him lie here, wrapped up in me.

  We fall asleep, we fall in love.

  I never believed in love before Francis came home.

  21

  Francis

  good things never last forever

  The night Engela cleaned the house and cooked us dinner, my work family became my real family and she became the love of my life. She broke invisible chains that had held me down, even after I was free from the four walls of prison.

  No one can understand how freeing that was, to feel and enjoy her and her body, to have her touch me and not fear her own desires. She keeps telling me we will take baby steps, then throws me off cliffs like that one.

  We have grown used to having her about the house now. She didn’t want to go home again after that, so I bought us a bigger bed and she suggested some of the guys move across the road, to her house.

  Three weeks after the funeral she went home and cleared out all her things, and moved them to my side of the street. She donated her Ma’s things to the church, and Dan’s baby things to the creche center where welfare babies wait for forever homes.