“And then what?” I ask them.
“And then we’ll have a totally awesome trip.”
I start walking towards the park. Bafana comes after me.
“Fuck off, you poes. Your naai. If you want to take drugs fuck off,” I say and curl my fist at him.
He lets me go. I hear him mumbling with the other two something about another guy Bafana knows about. They walk towards the Seven Eleven where the lights are always on.
I walk towards the Broken Bath, my strops making flapping sounds that irritate me. I take them off and put them in my jacket pocket. I walk on the beach and feel broken shells under my feet. They make a crackling sound which makes me sad. I hate sadness because it means tears are not far off. And I can’t have that. Men don’t cry. When have I ever seen Allen cry? Never. Or Gerald? Never. Or Sealy? And since I’m nearly thirteen I mustn’t cry. I must be strong. I must be a man. That is what men do. They don’t cry because tears are messy. They make your eyes all puffy and snot just runs from your nose and that’s messy. Grown-ups aren’t messy. They are always neat. They are neat because they don’t cry. When does anyone see a grown-up walking in the street crying? Never. Even my father never cried. And my mother, she never cried. Her tears were her blood. She cried only when Papa beat her until she bled.
My stomach moans something awful as I walk along the beach. I go to the bins and have a scratch around. There is nothing but empty packets and drops of cool drink left in tins. Two men who look like hobos watch me closely as I scratch near their bin. They are drinking something.
“Hungry?” one of them says.
I go up to them. Sitting in the shadow of a spotlight the one stands up to shake my hand.
“What’s your name?”
“Azure.”
“Sit down.”
I sit next to them but not on their blanket.
“Have a drink,” the other offers me a half-empty two-litre bottle of cheap wine. I take a slug.
“Here, sit against the wall. It’s still warm from the sun. It was hot today, huh?”
“Ja, it was hot.”
We drink like that for a while. The other’s stomach also moans. He coughs and spits out a blob of green from his throat. It’s obvious that they also have no bread. But I sit with them even though I don’t drink much wine. White wine or any wine for that matter always makes my head spin.
“Don’t drink much, do you?” the one who asked me over says. “By the way I’m David and this is Pieter.”
I can hear that they’re both Afrikaans but I don’t attempt to speak their language. That’s how grown-ups fuck you. If you’re too eager to please, to say hi and make a friend they think you’re a moegoe and take you for a ride.
“It’s going to be warm tonight,” I offer.
“We’ll sleep well,” Pieter says.
“Not if you snore,” David says.
“Ag, los my uit, man. Ek is moeg.”
“Praat jy Afrikaans?” Pieter asks.
I shake my head.
“Engelsman, nè?”
“Sotho,” I say.
“Joburg,” David says.
“Ja.”
“I thought so. You don’t find many Sotho mense in Cape Town. All the darkies speak Xhosa here.”
A huge wave comes crashing on the rocks. We keep quiet and drink the wine.
“You don’t drink much,” he says again. I take a large sip.
“I get a headache if I drink too much.”
“Babelas,” Pieter says and laughs. He ends up coughing again and spits out another big blob of green.
“David, ek kan nie meer drink nie. My maag is seer, man.”
Me and David polish off the bottle.
“Is jy honger?” he asks after a while.
I shake my head.
“Is jy dronk?”
I nod and burp.
“Jy’s ôraait nou. Ek is ook van daai kant. Daai Vaalie mense, ek verstaan hulle nie.”
I get up and stumble.
“Stadig, ou kêrel,” David says.
I open my pants and take a piss in the spotlight. The light makes my eyes strain. I piss for a long time and sigh with relief.
“Nothing like a good piss,” David says when I’m done.
I drop next to him on the sand, my head spinning with wine.
“Waar’s jou skoene?”
I take out my strops from my jacket.
“Daai’s nie skoene nie,” he says flatly.
“I lost them,” I say and put them carefully in my jacket.
“Where?” he yawns.
“In town.”
Pieter is already sleeping. David curls up next to him. I doze off for a while sitting next to them. Not long after dozing off I get up. I stumble to the edge of the water and open my mouth. Brown stuff pours out my mouth like a fountain. I puke till I squeeze my stomach into a pea. Then I take a sip of seawater from another place and rinse my mouth. My hunger soon returns but it is late and I’m tired. Too tired to walk back to my sleeping place. So I get up the stairs leading to a pathway for people. They have a fancy name for it in English but I forget it. It’s a word that I learned in school once. I walk towards the drinking hole near the Men’s toilet. I don’t want to wake up with a babelas so I drink lots of water. It fills my stomach but doesn’t take away the hunger. My back stiff, I walk back to the swimming pool.
A few cars run down Main Road. It is late. People are sleeping. My breath stinks. I want to take another piss but hold it in. It’s not much further to go to where I sleep. The air is a little misty. I go down Broken Bath and walk towards the corner near the swimming pool. The shells are ruthless on my soles. But my feet are hard. They don’t tear or bleed easily. I take a long piss near a bush. Bafana is nowhere in sight. He’s probably frying his brain.
I curl up on clear plastic which I hide near a bush. I cover my head and face with my large oversized jacket and sleep like a rock.
6
I still can’t get a trick and I’m too scared to go into town to wash and park cars in case Gerald sees me. Besides, he’s always got eyes in town. Pigeons, people, they are all the same. At the end of the day they are just rats. They’ll take you out for a few crumbs of bread. Gerald, you won’t guess who I saw in town today. You know that laaitie who called you a kaffir? And Gerald will only be too happy to let them kick the shit out of me. Beat him till those eyes of his turn purple. Kick the sunshine out of his little smile, that little moegoe calling me a kaffir! Who the fuck does he think he is? Just because he’s got blue eyes, fuck him, he’s still a kaffir. Does he know who I am? Does he know the Twenty-Eights? Does he know what I can do to him? And after that I must apologise to Gerald because Gerald is a clean coloured with straight hair and light skin. And then I must give him some money because my hands are too dirty to buy him anything.
And Allen, I can’t go anywhere near him without a cent to my name. I haven’t seen Joyce for days as well because I’m too embarrassed to go without shoes. What will I say to her? She still leaves out food for me in the morning.
The sky is dark. Stars light it up. I hang around the park in Sea Point hoping that one of the moffies will pick me up. The problem