Dating : The flies of Joburg

Omphile opened his eyes and saw the sun rise sluggishly on the horizon, bringing with it a new day. He made a habit of watching the sunrise and sunset each day, giving himself a moment of silence and peace. Sometimes, he even dreamt of a better life. But dreams have a habit of occupying precious real estate in the mind and in the heart. I don’t need them, he said to himself, with that little morning bliss being shattered silently by a blunt and so well known anxiety.

He got up and saw Lesedi. She was the light in his life. She slept peacefully on her raised bed, or what essentially was a mattress that stood on some old bricks. He headed for the shabby desk in the opposite corner of the room. The paint on the walls of the apartment decided to leave a long time. Or maybe it hadn’t been there, ever. It was hard to say.

There, he had his day clothes, folded on the chair, a pair of jeans that were once bright blue but now were a faded, dusty shade of that once vivid color. He liked his white shirt with a missing button a lot. It was cool and repelled the heat of the Joburg sun. It also had a tint of yellow, because it was washed quite often, but it was clean and neat. His backpack stood by the window, at the foot of the bed. After putting his shirt on, he went to the window again, this time looking down from the 19th floor of his Hillbrow flat at the city streets. The streets oozed a vivid and invigorating uproar. The view almost intoxicated him.

– I wonder how is it, not to have any worries? To just, I don’t know, live? To be like that butterfly or a fly or whatever the hell it was, from that magazine I’d seen from a classmate at school. Who lives only one day. Yes, yes, all worries would make no sense. Me and all those other flies would live everything to the fullest. We would fly, we would sing, we would smile. If flies can smile.

He smiled because he imagined a fly with a huge grin on its face. He put his hand under the bed where he felt a tightly wrapped package. He put it carefully to his nose and smelled the dagga inside. Maybe it would be a better idea to just sit on the roof of the flat complex and watch the sunrise and sunset, smoking the stuff and dreaming of the ocean, he thought.

-Yeah. I want to see the ocean. As soon as possible.

He wanted to smell it, to hear the waves crashing lazily on its shores. To smile. But a real, big smile, an unstoppable smile. He took the package and put it in an aluminum foil that was also under the bed and tucked it in his backpack. He put an old bottle of Coke filled with tap water in it, a fairly old kitchen knife with an orange handle, and checked his chain around his neck, which he kissed. He went to Lesedi and kissed her lightly on the forehead, looked in the next room at his sleeping mother and went out the door. He went down 19 floors on foot because the elevator hadn’t been working for several months, since the last fight. He suddenly remembered that.

When the guns started shooting, he closed his eyes and held Lesedi in his arms, close to his chest. His mother was lying under the window, screaming and cursing at destiny, at their ancestors, at their dad and the times in which they lived. To Omphile it felt like a crazy incantation and the tone of his mother’s voice induced even more fear in him. His heart was pounding when he heard footsteps at the door. He knew that at any moment someone could break it and shoot them for no reason at all. Fortunately, they’ve made it and it all ended fairly quickly. In just one hour, the dealers were back in their place and motley groups of people, children, elderly, were sitting on the street talking, cursing, laughing and not daring to think about tomorrow. They were flies. Like nothing out of the damn ordinary had happened.

19 floors down, he went outside his apartment block. The air was clogged with street dust and the agitation of the morning. A man was lying on a cardboard, right on the stairs. He didn’t even seem to feel Omphile’s presence. The strangely huge yellowish beanie the hobo had on his head amused him. He held his hands clenched on the backpack’s straps and made a right.He began to be alert.

It wasn’t a good job. It was a dangerous job. It was a job. Like any job, it had rules. Number one: get back home, preferably in one piece. The people who bought weed from him definitely didn’t value his life to much. They didn’t care, he didn’t care. Rule two: don’t ask questions. Rule three: Movement is life. Walk, run, push, jump, slide, just don’t stop for too long. Avoiding the subway or very crowded places is a good idea. The subway is very dangerous. He had been walking since his bike was dusted 4 months ago. He felt exposed but that’s life, mostly, it sucks.

The dope’s final destination was somewhere in Sandton. The bigger fish had a hold there, taking the dope and selling it to them white boys with money looking for the thrill and the good life. Sandton was nice, he dreamt of someday to move there. Or even better, on a beach in the Cape, in a small shack, with a small room for Lesedi, and a little plot to cultivate and sell on the beach, just enough to have something to eat and go to school.

He could have walked the long way from the slum, to the paradise of the sumptuous villas of Sandton, but he was making a living at the bottom of the ladder in this dangerous game, so he would meet Abraham, a middle man, somewhere on the outskirts of Rivonia Road. The money usually came in the evening, or the next day, in Hillbrow. A 12-year-old boy, with a bulky man, a former boxer with a missing eye, would wait for him in front of his apartment block and hand him a thin roll of bills. It wasn’t much but it helped his family. Rent day was his dread. God, if he didn’t have the rent, the landlord would throw them out on the street faster than the gangs! He walked briskly on Claim Street ready to exit on Empire Road. The sun was beating down harder.

– Ahh, if those damn thieves hadn’t taken my bike, he said out loud, with his head baked by the intense heat.

Empire Road is a wide, open boulevard. He didn’t like the open space so he decided to take the side streets, through Westcliff. He stood out there. It was a white area. Funny how it was more dangerous for him among those chic boutiques and perfectly cut green meadows, than the slums, and not just because of what he carried in his backpack. He didn’t think anything would really change. Poverty was still a fact of life and will ever be. That’s why he had to move his ass around the city in this damn heat, so he could raise some money. Rent. School. Food. His mother was ill. She was always coughing, sometimes with blood, and talking less and less. Anyway, he doesn’t really care about her. He couldn’t remember her smiling or saying one good word to him or to his sister. She was just a piece of furniture. But Lesedi needed her. She needed her mum. What the hell will Lesedi do if…

A loud horn woke him from these dark thoughts. He was already at the intersection of Westcliff Drive and Kilkenny Rd. You’re an idiot, you’ve got to pay attention man, he said to himself. You want to become someone’s wife in jail, to somehow end up more miserable than you already are? He suddenly appreciated that crappy bed back home and his yellowish shirt so he walked on, more vigilant.

– I hope Abraham is there.

He had this stupid habit of not being where he said he was. Paranoia, most probably. He always called him last minute to tell him to come three or four blocks away from where they originally agreed to meet. Always with a scared voice. Omphile passed by the brick wall on which Johannesburg Zoo was written in large capital letters. He had never been there. With today’s money, maybe I will put some aside and buy a ticket. Lesedi would like it a lot. He heard the sounds the animals were making, which seemed loud and weird, maybe even scared, but didn’t paid too much attention to it.