On an average working day, he is small as an insect within the base of the tower in the sky. The value of the merchandise on the floor of just one section of the department store is worth more than he might earn in a lifetime. He tells himself that modern culture is a thing that robs the world of itself. By sleight of hand or twist of fate it continually creates new ways for men to follow madly. A single shirt costs one and a half thousand in this shop. A jacket over seven. He takes a shirt of pale lilac off the rail and straightens the collar, fastens the buttons at the top. He switches the place of one shirt with another and then another as he arranges them in order of colour and hue and then of size. As he works he mentally picks out a shirt for each of his upcoming gigs, deciding which he’d wear if he could ever afford to purchase one. He likes the deep shades, the purples and reds with a regal resonance that allude to the lion inside him. He knows he’d look good performing in these shirts with his braids tied in a scarf, and he thinks that one day he’ll be rich enough to buy the whole rail. Until then he’ll live as the world wants him to. He’ll hold his vision in his head and in his heart and embrace the ways of ordinary men.
He keeps his phone on and when the call comes what surprises him most is his own ability to be calm. He answers as the manager passes, wagging a finger at Sizwe’s face. But her voice is in his ear and his heart imagines a tomorrow where there is purpose beyond paycheques and spoken poetry. Sizwe. The test is positive. I have your baby inside me.
He closes his eyes. The words sink into his bones. He makes an arrangement to see her at his mother’s house, once his workday is done. A calm descends on the rest of his hours, a kind of sheer light to look through. He is summoned into the manager’s office and given a first written warning for taking a personal call on the floor. He takes the paper, the warning, folds it in half, and in half again, and tucks it into his shirt pocket beside the quiet phone that brought him the news. Then he leans forward to speak. He tells the manager that his rules are purposeless because he operates from a place of ego. He says that the time of egos and domination are past and if people don’t learn a new way, the same patterns will be repeated like a game of chess with two opposing sides, black and white. He says that time is endless and the world will wait forever for people to learn the lessons they resist, before it moves on. He says that he is not afraid to wait along with the world, if that is what it takes.
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He walks from the office to prevent himself from lifting his fist to the man. As he goes he hears only the rubber soles of his own shoes squeaking on the pristine floor.
After the taxi drops him on the main road he walks the way home on dusty, ochre earth. The air hangs thick and dry. He can predict the weather from the smell and the taste of the place. He ingests these through his nose and he tastes them on his tongue. With every breath he samples the parched Soweto afternoon.
The glory of the past weekend’s performance lingers. Like a priest with his poetry he challenged his audience to think about their lives with knives and the strife involved with HIV. He looks to the west where the sun is low and gives thanks for what will be.
And then his phone rings; this time it is not Busi’s name on the screen. The number is withheld. He knows immediately who it is, and he smiles.
‘Heita,’ he says as he answers. He walks as he speaks. He laughs sometimes, and he walks on. He speaks and nods. He asks many questions, and wipes a sudden wetness from his cheek. Before he says goodbye he speaks into the handset: ‘Hey bro, I’m going to be a father at last,’ and then he laughs again. He nods and he swallows and he says goodbye. And as he walks on he dreams of Biko and his people, and he knows that he will sleep well tonight.
Outside his mother’s house the smell of meat reaches him on the front step.
‘Ngipheka inyama, Sizwe,’ his mother tells him inside. ‘Do you want to eat?’
‘That’s good,’ he says in return, and kisses the place on her head where the yellow fabric of her headscarf makes a line like the horizon against the skin. ‘I’m hungry. Of course I’ll eat.’
‘How is that woman?’
‘Who, Ma?’
‘Thomas’s wife. I’m thinking about that woman so much.’
Sizwe leans across his mother and examines the food on the stove. ‘You know what this is, Ma. This is life. She will survive.’
‘But to be on your own, and so young. It’s hard.’
‘We’re all on our own, Ma.’
‘For you, I wish for you a wife like that one day.’
‘Ah, Ma!’
Suddenly Busi appears at the open door like a vision or a messenger from another place, and when he sees her he knows. He knows from her eyes, he doesn’t know how else, but he knows.
‘Come in,’ he says, watching her.
She enters the house with her head bowed and she greets the older woman and accepts a plate of meat and potatoes and gravy. Sizwe steadies his gaze on her as she eats it all, her eyes not ready for his face, never glancing back at him. Beyond her hunger, he sees her shame. His mother makes easy conversation and he watches. He tells his mother he’ll eat later, but now the pipes of his stomach have turned and twisted and he fears the girl’s eyes and what they will not say. Finally there is only a sucked bone on Busi’s plate and she places the plate on the low coffee table and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. His mother catches the silence and she stands and clears the plates, retreating into the kitchen and closing the sliding door between the two rooms.
Sizwe hopes the girl will tell him what she has done with her own courage, without him having to ask, but she says nothing. ‘What do you want to say to me?’ he asks instead.
She makes a sharp movement with her head like a crow and he sees pain. Not an obvious physical pain but an ache not yet revealed, something buried like a stone beneath the sand at the bottom of the sea that over time will wear away at her. He thinks that the damage isn’t immediately present, but when it comes it will be great.
‘I’m not pregnant any more,’ she says at last. In her absent self she also finds his eyes. She can look into them now, and confess. ‘There is no baby, any more.’
His head moves slowly from side to side but his eyes don’t follow. They remain still and penetrating, casting disbelief onto her face. ‘Busi,’ he says. ‘What have you done?’ He takes her shoulders, grips too hard and pushes her back. He sees in her face that his power is too much and he lets her go.
She knows, suddenly, that he knows it. There is no point in hiding it or covering over the trauma to her body. She is sore, she is bleeding and tired, and she’s kept it to herself like a closed box with a tired, repellent secret. ‘Don’t touch me again,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry, Busi. It’s just … the baby … what did you do?’
‘We’re too young,’ she tells him.
‘I’m thirty-three. I’ve been a man a long time. I can have a child.’
‘I’m too young. You work in a shop and I’m still at college. We can’t afford it.’
‘I have my gigs too,’ he says.
‘Exactly.’ The way she looks at him, is as though already she pities him. ‘Like you’re going to get rich doing poetry,’ she says. ‘You’re dreaming, Sizwe. You can’t have both worlds.’ He wants to shake her again, to hurt her even, as though it could change her mind or make her give him what he wants. But she doesn’t want to argue, to defend her position and her recent action. Sizwe has no more words inside him. He stares at the darkening window as she stands