a size larger than hers and his belly sloped forward, coming to rest in a contented heap between his legs. At school Precious used to tease Jabu about his weight. She hoped he didn’t remember.
Suddenly, he tossed a broken piece of mirror across the mat towards her. It lay there, glinting wickedly, like a sliver of a star that had somehow fallen from the sky. Precious looked down at it, not knowing if she should pick it up or leave it where it fell.
‘She will go back to her people,’ Jabu said.
‘Which people?’ she cried. ‘Go back where, Jabu?’
He grunted and pointed his fly whisk above his head. Precious looked up but all she could see were the shadowy traces of wooden beams.
She didn’t understand. ‘Must my daughter climb up on your roof?’ she asked.
Jabu began to beat himself about the shoulders with the fly whisk again. He didn’t say anything else. It looked like he was done. That was the problem with amagqirha, Precious decided. You never knew what you would get. She sighed and tucked a fifty-rand note under the corner of the mat. As she got to her feet, Jabu flicked his fly whisk at her. She was dismissed.
Precious hurried to the room where she’d left Karabo. For some reason, she knocked on the door before she went in.
‘Karabo?’ She pressed her cheek against the door. ‘I’m finished.’
When there was no reply Precious thought her daughter might have fallen asleep. She pushed the door open and saw only an empty chair.
Karabo wasn’t there.
CHAPTER 9
It bothered Karabo that her mother had gone to see igqirha when she also went to church. Wasn’t that some sort of cheating? It was like the people at the Spar who pushed ahead in the queue when it wasn’t their turn. She’d heard her mother clearly through the wooden partition. It was Teacher this, Teacher that, in an endless stream of inappropriate chatter that first upset and then irritated her. She got up and left when her mother began to share the most intimate details of what she and Teacher did in their bedroom. Used to do. It didn’t sound like they had sex anymore.
She was glad to be out of Jabu’s house. It was hardly furnished and looked as if he was still moving in. But there was something odd about the house, too, that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. And then she realised what it was. There was no one else there. All the houses Karabo had ever been to in Mthatha were brimful with people. If they weren’t inside, they were lolling about in the street, making it hard to tell which house they belonged to. Jabu’s home was different. Other than Jabu Molefe himself, it was as deserted as a schoolyard in the holidays.
Outside in the yard, there were no clothes hanging out to dry on the line, not even a broom propped against the wall. Even Karabo’s unwell aunt, Thembeka, had people spilling in and out of her house all the time. No, it wasn’t right for a man to live alone. White people did that, not blacks. Or perhaps it was a decree passed down from the spirits that igqirha should always live by himself – Karabo didn’t know.
In Jabu’s yard a rusted tyre rim leaned tiredly against the base of a tree. The tree itself was no longer a tree but a stump with jagged fissures criss-crossing the dry surface. A discarded street lamp lay across the yard and bisected it into two triangular halves. The bulb had been scavenged long ago, leaving an empty staring eye socket. A clutch of coloured wires spilled untidily out of a hole in its side. They looked like the entrails of a fallen beast.
Karabo wandered across to the small gate, wondering if she should tell Teacher that her mother had been to see igqirha. But she knew she’d only hurt Teacher if she told him. He’d withdraw into himself and probably not say anything for several days. Sometimes she wished her father would lash out and scream his unhappiness into the world. She thought he’d feel much better if he did that.
The boys were where they’d left them and Karabo’s anger surged again. There were four of them. They stood in the street, passing a cigarette and a bottle between them. They looked at Karabo warily and as she approached, the smallest one moved quietly behind the others. The one holding the cigarette sucked on it until the tip glowed brightly, then blew a cloud of acrid smoke at her.
‘You have come,’ he said.
Those were the exact words igqirha had said to her mother. Well, maybe that was the way people greeted each other around here.
The boy blew more smoke at her and his lips curled in an unpleasant smile. His head was strangely flattened on both sides. His mother must have changed her mind and squeezed her thighs together just as he was coming out. It looked like he had no lips for they were so dark they blended into the rest of his face.
Karabo held out her hand to take the bottle as one boy was passing it to another. It hovered in the no man’s land for a second until Flathead nodded his approval. She expected the drink to scorch a fiery trail down her throat but it turned out to be a warm and insipid beer. It was like drinking soapsuds. Grimacing in distaste, she handed the bottle back.
‘This tastes like shit,’ Karabo said.
The boys looked at each other sheepishly; even Flathead looked embarrassed.
‘Eish! No money,’ he mumbled.
Karabo took the cigarette from his hand and blew a stream of smoke back into his face. He didn’t like that. He grabbed her by the wrist and his grip was hard and cruel. He pulled her towards him, hips swaying in a provocative dance. His other hand pressed hard against the small of her back and a distinct smell of unwashed bedclothes engulfed her.
‘You’re not from here,’ he said in a harsh voice. He pushed her backwards to get a better look at her and a wet, pink tongue poked out from between his lips.
He jerked his chin in the direction of Jabu’s house. ‘What did Jabu say to you?’
The words were out of Karabo’s mouth before she even knew they were on their way. ‘He said to stop letting men fuck you for money.’
The others sniggered and Flathead spun around, his eyes flashing with indignation.
‘Shut up!’ he snarled.
He slapped the boy closest to him on the side of his head and the boy yelped and staggered backwards, more out of surprise than from any real pain.
‘I should take you inside and fuck you,’ Flathead said to Karabo.
He wasn’t much older than her and there was little conviction in his voice. It was more a show of bravado than a declaration of intent.
‘What with?’ Karabo jeered. ‘There’s nothing in your trousers.’
This time the others burst into peals of raucous laughter. Flathead charged at them, his fists flailing, but to little effect and he quickly tired. He turned his misshapen head and looked at Karabo with hatred in his eyes, the weight of it bending his spine and hunching him over like a crooked little man. His tongue snaked out again, pink and agile in the slack wetness of his mouth, and his lower lip trembled. Despite her earlier bluster, Karabo’s breath caught in her throat.
‘Yel. Lo. Bone,’ said Flathead, in a rasping whisper.
Three distinct syllables. And somehow he managed to make each syllable more offensive than the last.
The word sloshed around inside Karabo, hunting for some past hurt to latch itself onto, but she stayed strangely calm. She’d been called Yellowbone before but always from a distance. This time she was so close to Flathead a gust of warm, fetid breath buffeted her face.
Karabo squared her shoulders in an attempt to hide her fear. She knew she wouldn’t have stirred up such depths of animosity if her skin were as dark as Teacher’s. Sometimes it was so unbearable being light- skinned that if she could have chosen a different complexion at birth, she’d have done so without a second thought. It would be like going into the hardware store and choosing a colour from a paint chart.
Flathead