or if the cogs are stuck and the hands, twitching-twitching, count the same second over and over?
In the dark it is cold. The icy night air seeps into the scrap mountain, between bumpers that jut at odd angles, through sagging windscreens, over bonnets and roofs where rust has eaten away hope and shine and Mama Moon’s light glints off broken glass. The cold presses in, layering chill over chill until the metal shrinks and groans. It sinks towards us. When it reaches the tanker beneath us and the trailer above us, it swaps frost for body heat.
In the dark sounds are big and small, there and not there. The metal creaks and moans and complains. Our tomb speaks, saying things we don’t want to understand, but do. It tells us it’s easy to crawl into its belly. It says there is no way out. Around us things scratch, fall silent, scratch. Tiny nails scrape, tiny teeth nibble, small creatures burrow into the rotten seat stuffing. The mountain is alive. The mountain is dead.
I forget Sindi.
She’s so silent, drifting in, drifting out, asleep, awake, afraid, afraid, dreaming-dreaming. The dark’s a swamp. It drowns my mind and steals my memories. I try to hold on, but it’s more than I am.
After a while, the dark pressing down on me begins to feel good, like when Mama squashed my face between her breasts and held me there until I couldn’t breathe. The dark feels safe. I close my eyes.
I forget me.
Follow You to Your Drowning
“Fphst.”
I sit on the bumper of a yellow electric, blinking. From my perch I can see an ocean of dirt rolling out beneath me, shadowed by the skeletal trees that push skywards like cracks. To my left, pines hunch in a sombre clump. I blink again. The light’s so sharp I can see the crisscross mesh of pine needles carpeting the ground. To the right, the highway arcs against the horizon like a grey rainbow. The sight of it makes me feel empty inside. I look away, not wanting to feel like that when I’m on top of the world, light and free, floating-floating. I wonder how I got to be sitting on a sun-faded plastic bumper, leaning against the dented bonnet of a car. I turn my mind round and round, but all I find is a space, a big black hole, and it makes me feel bad.
“Fphst.”
The noise sounds like someone with no teeth trying to whistle. I look down. Below me, two boys stand on the edge of an old tanker. One boy has his head shoved into the space between a trailer and some cars. The other boy wears a long coat. I stare at them, the funny feeling in my gut getting bigger.
“Hey bra, let’s waai, maybe she not in there,” says the boy with the coat.
“She is,” says the other, pulling his head back into the sunlight, “I can see her feet.” He wipes his nose on the back of his hand then pulls his beanie over his ears and sticks his head back in. “Fphst.”
“That nywana dead, bra, you think of that?”
“How’d she die in here, huh?” His voice sounds like the second bounce of an echo. “No bra, she’s alive, I see her move.”
“Ag, you ’magined it, she dead bra, los it or we gonna miss last dish.”
Beanie Boy pulls his head out. He shrugs. “Let’s waai then, I’m hungry.”
But they stand like statues, waiting-waiting.
I lose interest in them and scan the sky. A few blushing cirrus clouds streak against the blue. The sight of them makes the black in my head swirl and stirs something at the bottom of me. I kick the heels of my babydolls against the bumper. The hole spins, faster, faster. I feel sick. I think I might vomit. I open my mouth and a word pops out: “Spookasem.”
It floats in front of my face like a tiny sunset cloud. I stare at it. I want to put it in my mouth, eat it, roll it around on my tongue so I can say it again, again, again. I clap my hands over it, but when I open my palms the fluffy cloud is gone and all that remains is a squashed mat of pink fibre no bigger than a piece of chewing gum. I put it in my mouth. A burst of burnt sugar fizzles on my tongue and is gone. I burp.
On the tanker below, the boys look at each other. “You hear that?” asks Beanie Boy. Sticking his head back into the space, he shouts, “Sista, can’t you speak?” He pauses to listen, but there’s no reply. “She can’t speak, maybe she can’t speak.”
“If she can’t speak, she’s dead. Let’s waai,” says the boy with the coat.
“Sweet, waai. What about Ma Wilma? What you gonna tell her? No, sorry Ma, we chafa a girl and now we lost her. Ma Wilma going to be kwata.”
“Aggg! I don’t know why you told the ouledi we got a nywana in the first place. Why you do that, huh? Move, let me look.”
They shuffle sideways, swap places. The boy in the long coat sticks his head into the space. “Okay, sista, no worries, we going to get you out!” he shouts. He takes off his coat. Without it, he looks skinny-skinny and too tall. He gives it to the other boy, then wriggles into the space until only his feet stick out. I watch the bottom of his shoes kick up and down, like swimmer’s feet. Swimming through cars, a swimmer in a car dump. The thought of it makes me laugh.
“Marlboro, pull bra.” His voice is muffled, metallic, like one of the rotten cars is speaking.
I laugh harder. The laughing catches and I can’t stop. I laugh so hard I begin to cry. Tears roll down my cheeks, dripping off the end of my face. I watch them drop, like tiny stars falling from the sky. When they hit the ground, they explode. Sisi’s going to fall and the . . .
I stop. The weird feeling in my guts is back. I clutch my belly. Something stirs, pushes against my hands. It’s like I’ve swallowed a snake and it’s trying to chew its way out. “Help me,” I try to shout, but my voice is hoarse. I can only manage a whisper.
“Rilexa, sista, we helping you.”
Below me, the boys begin to pull something from the dark hole. They work as if the thing is fragile. Maybe they’re helping a butterfly from a cocoon – but if you do that, the butterfly will never be strong enough to fly. And if a butterfly can’t fly, it will fall and shatter on the ground.
Sisi’s going to fall and the . . .
A girl emerges. They sit her down on the ledge and hold on to her shoulders. I watch them for a while, relieved that she isn’t a butterfly. After a few minutes, the boys begin to climb down, lowering the girl between them. The snake in my belly squirms. I push down harder, trying to squash it, but each time they drop a car, my abdomen jerks like it’s trying to follow. It jerks so hard I fear I might fall. I let go of my belly and wedge my fingers into the crack between the bonnet and the windscreen, but the pull is strong, dragging me down.
I look at the clouds and the trees and the grey rainbow. I want to stay up here, float above the world forever. The ground is bad, I’ve been there before. Down there it’s dark and cold and you can hear things scratching. Then the girl looks up, straight at me, and I see her face, sharp as the pine needles. The face is my face, mine but not mine. Her name creeps up my throat onto my tongue. I whisper it, “Sindisiwe,” and saying it makes me know my own name.
Her gaze, hot and spiky, pricks my mind slowly – like a pin stuck through sellotape into the skin of a balloon. My memories hiss out and I begin to know myself. In her head and in her heart she holds the pieces of me, and her gaze glues me back together.
Then she looks away and, with a last glance at the twilight dusting the blue, I slide to the ground.
Streetlights flicker through the trees. The boys lead us past the mountain of cars towards the quiet suburban streets that lie on the other side. Three guard dogs come from nowhere and walk alongside us, but the boys don’t seem bothered. The dogs whine, lonely as lost souls, and lick the boys’ fingers.
“Chila,” the one in the coat says, “these hounds been well fed.” He laughs like he’s cracked a joke.
The boys are the same two who ran from the shacks. They’re called Booysen and