Bom Boy Read online

  Monday 5th November 2012

  ‘So I hear you got pulled in. What did Robocop have to say? Hellooo! You there?’

  ‘Questioning.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Shhh!’ someone in a nearby cubicle leaned over the partition.

  Gene, still sitting on his chair, used his legs to slide himself closer to Leke. He dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘What did you do?’

  One of the clients had picked up an irregularity in their medical statement. Leke had paid most of the money back already but Management was investigating the query, nothing was certain. In a sense it was routine to inspect the claims assessors regularly. Gene stared, waiting for a response. Leke shrugged,

  ‘Standard procedure, I guess.’

  Unsatisfied, Gene returned to his desk. Leke burrowed into his work, since he'd been told about the investigation a sense of panic had come over him. If he were found guilty would they arrest him?

  ‘Oi! Cut it out,’ Gene said pointing to Leke's foot tapping the carpet.

  At midday Leke went to the bathroom. There were urinals and sinks lining the walls. Towards the back there was one basic cubicle, and one for the disabled, with a sink of its own and handle bars along its sides. Leke closed and latched the door behind him, he took the envelope out and put it down, careful to avoid a splash of something on the sticky tiles.

  The seat was poorly fitted and the cover fell onto his back when he sat down. He dug his elbow behind him to keep it upright.

  Tsotso was with him, the way she always was. He could feel the weight of her on his lap, her backside pressing against his thighs, his trouser zip.

  With his free hand Leke stroked her head, the ridges of the braids like Braille, her neck bent backwards. He could smell her. He could–

  ‘Leke, you in there?’

  What did Gene want?

  ‘Leke? I'm popping out for lunch, you want something? I'm going to the Indian place.’

  Tsotso dissolved, and the acerbic smell of mothballs returned.

  At the end of the day his manager called him in – nothing had been found to corroborate the client's suspicions, the investigation was being closed.

  Tuesday 3rd November 1992

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ Jane checked to see if the line had been dropped. ‘Hello?’ she said again and heard someone clear their throat. ‘Hello, who's that? How did you get my number?’

  ‘It's Elaine.’

  ‘Who? Elaine who?’

  ‘Elame. From the post office. From the hospital. Remember?’

  ‘Oh Elaine! Gosh! How are you? Goodness your boy must be big now? Five months?’

  ‘Almost three months.’

  ‘Lovely So good to hear you. What a surprise!’ The events of that day – sitting with the woman through birth – had stayed with Jane. She thought of it fondly. Only sometimes late in the night she wished it were her on the delivery bed, in those moments she suffered the memory, crying into the pillow so as not to wake Marcus.

  ‘Yes, Jane. I thought of you.’

  ‘Thank you. How is the baby?’

  ‘He's good. He's big really growing.’

  ‘What's his name?’

  ‘Leke.’

  ‘Oh, that's an interesting name.’

  ‘From his father.’

  ‘How is your husband?’

  After a few seconds Jane heard crying and remembered that the baby's father was in prison.

  ‘Oh, I'm stupid. Sorry Elaine. I'm sorry.’

  ‘Can I come to see you? Can I meet you somewhere?’

  Would she bring the baby? Since her last miscarriage six months before Jane had experienced the need to both be around babies and avoid them. Driving past a crèche she had burst into tears, confusing Marcus.

  When she'd elected to drive Elaine to the hospital she'd been a bit worried but her emotions had remained steady.

  For several days afterwards she'd woken up with nausea, and noticed a slight swelling in her belly. Her nipples grew tender. In the morning after Marcus had risen for the shower she held herself, cradled the emptiness in her arms.

  ‘Please? Let's meet.’

  ‘Yes. Let's do that. When and where?’

  ‘Tomorrow? Can I meet you at Hendelsen, off Viljoen Street in Goodwood?’

  ‘Oh goodness, where's that?’

  ‘There's a Stodels on the corner and a park opposite. It's a quiet road. We can meet at the coffee shop next to the park.’

  ‘Hendelsen. Hendelsen Road? Let me write that down.’

  ‘Thank you. 7 am? I need to see you before work. I hope that's not too early.’

  ‘Oh boy! Let's make it 7.30am. I can sit and wait for the Stodels to open. I need some soil anyway.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Okay. Take care till then.’

  A sense of unease followed Jane after she put the phone down but she couldn't decipher it. Her sleep was shallow and when her alarm went off at 5.30am Marcus complained, ‘What's going on?’

  ‘I'm going into town early today. Need to run some errands.’

  ‘At half past five in the morning, Jane? What's going on with you, you've been shuffling in bed all night?’

  ‘Sorry It's nothing, Marcus. Go back to bed. I'll give you a call later.’

  The N1 traffic slid along with an ease that would slow to a crawl in another hour. Jane felt relieved that the appointment was early and a tension released somewhere in her body, she turned on the radio switching from the news to a music channel.

  Hendelsen Road looked frozen in time, misplaced as though the quaint baskets of bright plastic flowers drooping from the balconies above the strip of shops belonged somewhere in Newlands and not in Goodwood. A grey haze hung low over the narrow street. She drove past the Stodels at the corner. A woman in a white bonnet was sweeping the pavement in front of a café. Jane noticed a figure sitting on a bench in the park, a woman straining her neck, watching the road and when Jane stuck her head out of the car window Elaine recognised her and waved.

  ‘Let me park. I'll join you,’ Jane shouted as she pulled off the road.

  She grabbed her bag and turned her car alarm on. As she walked towards the park she dug her hands in her pockets, a bite still heralded the mornings in despite summer around the corner. She stepped over the low bar cordoning off the park area.

  ‘Elaine?’ The bench was suddenly empty.

  Jane walked towards the bench she'd just seen Elaine wave from.

  ‘Elaine?’ she said again and gave a quick look around the small park but it was empty.

  Back at the bench she noticed a large bundle, she immediately knew what it was. She looked around still expecting Elaine to come running with some excuse about having to dash to the bathroom.

  The baby moved and the cloth bundle came awake with gurgling sounds, Jane opened a small gap in the blankets and saw that Elaine had been right – he had grown.

  ‘Leke,’ Jane said smiling and crying.

  And she hoped something she knew she would never admit to anyone, not even Marcus. She hoped Elaine was gone and was never coming back. Even if it meant she were dead. She hoped this was final and she made a small pact with a God she seldom spoke to, that if it were final, and if this day could go unnoticed, she would bring up a kind and good person. Someone with a generous heart to make up for her own greedy longing. She collected the now crying bundle and held it to her chest.

  Friday 16th November 2012

  1.15 pm

  Leke offered Gene the regular rusk at lunchtime.

  ‘No,’ he said, leaving Leke standing with the biscuit.

  A few minutes later Leke got up to make himself some tea. Gene's coffee mug was empty.

  ‘Leave it,’ Gene snapped when Leke picked up the mug.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Someone said they saw you chatting to your new friend.’

  Leke stared at Gene, confused.

  ‘You know I like her. I wouldn't have pegged you, Leke, for the kind t
o go behind a person's back –’

  ‘Hey! There's nothing going on. I swear.’

  Gene was wrong, Tsotso mostly ignored him. Since his visit to her apartment she'd approached him a few times during lunch but he'd failed to carry through a conversation with her. In the past few days she appeared to have stopped noticing him altogether.

  ‘Ag! It doesn't matter,’ Gene said, turning back to his work. ‘Do what you want. I'll get over it.’

  Leke shook his head and wandered off to the kitchen. He made his tea and left it standing while he went to the bathroom. The envelope chaffed his skin when he walked, he worried that his sweat would ruin the paper. So what if he couldn't see the words, he still wanted the writing intact.

  Despite his earnest protestations Gene spoke little to him for the remainder of the day. Leke wished Gene's jealousy was called for, but the reality of his lack of relations with Tsotso pressed heavily on him.

  5.30 pm

  The directions to the hellerwork practitioner had been easy. Leke sat waiting on the couch. He looked down a short corridor which ended in a glass door with a fan light, outside was a garden and Leke could make out the sunflowers in the fading light. The receptionist was on the phone. When he'd pushed the door open she'd signalled for him to sit down. His cellphone vibrated – it was Marcus, he let it go to voicemail.

  The receptionist put her hand over the receiver and said, ‘Mr. Denton? Leke Denton? She's running a little late. Sorry.’

  He nodded and she returned to her conversation, tugging at the scarf on her head. When she put the phone down she apologised again.

  ‘Would you fill this out please, sir.’

  On the line where they asked how he would be paying he ticked “cash”.

  A few minutes later a tall woman with orange-brown dreadlocks came out of the back room. A shorter woman came out with her and went to settle her account. ‘I'm Ruth Kleinsmith,’ the taller woman said as she approached Leke, and they shook hands. Would you come with me please?’

  The small room had a door to one side and in the middle was a low bed with a white towel spread over it.

  ‘Just put your backpack down there. Then follow me. Before we start I want to see you walk.’

  Leke stared at her, confused.

  ‘Do you know what hellerwork is?’

  He shook his head. He couldn't remember the blurb on the flyer, something about posture. What had attracted him to this place had been their willingness to do consultations after working hours.

  “Do you know what hellerwork is?” she wanted to know. He didn't care about hellerwork. He hadn't slept through the night since Marcus had delivered the envelope, the writing scrawled on the thin paper remained undecipherable – fuzzy – his body ached and he longed for the touch of Tsotso's skin on his. Whatever he'd read on the flyer must have sounded like it would bring some form of relief. Although, now he wasn't sure anymore.

  ‘Is that clearer now?’ Leke heard her ask.

  He'd missed her explanation but he feigned a smile and Ruth smiled back.

  ‘Okay, Leke. Come with me. Let's see how you walk.’

  Leke followed her through the door. She instructed him to take his shoes off and asked him to walk along the narrow passageway towards a mirror at the end of it. He obeyed, already upset that the appointment would be a waste.

  ‘How does that feel?’ she asked. ‘How do your arms feel? And your waist? Try swinging your hips like this,’ she demonstrated for a few seconds and then let Leke try again.

  ‘Where's your weight now? Where do you feel it?’ she asked.

  Leke answered as best he could, struggling to concentrate. Eventually they returned to the small room.

  ‘Please, take off your shirt and trousers. Leave on your underwear.’

  Leke hesitated, the last person who had seen him naked was Jane and that was fifteen years ago.

  ‘I'll leave the room for a short while,’ her tone a combination of professionalism and gentle compassion.

  On her way out she said, ‘Here's a gown you can wrap yourself in. I'll only expose the part of the body I'm working on at any particular time.’

  The door snapped shut behind her and Leke stood alone in the room. He looked around. In all the doctors’ rooms he'd been to he'd noticed the posters they taped onto their walls. A picture of infected gums, bleeding. The Desiderata printed in cursive computer lettering. “Go placidly…” Leke remembered and “Strive to be happy.”

  On the walls of the hellerworker's room was a picture of the skeletal system and another of all the muscles in the body – a woman with no skin, and arrows and lettering. Leke studied it, snatches of her explanation coming back to him. She worked with the deep connective tissue of the body, releasing “history” she called it. He leaned forward, there was a proverb printed in big capital letters stuck on the wall:

  THERE IS NO CURE THAT DOES NOT COST (Kenya)

  Ruth knocked on the door and Leke jerked in fright.

  ‘You done, Leke? Can I come in?’

  ‘No,’ Leke said. He unzipped his grey trousers and unbuttoned his long-sleeve shirt.

  When Ruth entered the room she asked him to lie on the bed on his stomach. She wrapped towels around his body, leaving his left arm exposed. She took a small transparent bottle and deposited two drops into the palm of her hand and then rubbed her hands together. A sweet smell filled the room.

  ‘It's arnica,’ she said.

  She began to work her hands along his exposed arm. She massaged the palms of his hands and his shoulders. She continued to work in this way, revealing different parts of his upper body and kneading his flesh. She worked with the sides of her hands and the base of her thumbs and her fingertips. She stopped only in moments to rub more arnica oil on her hands.

  ‘How's that? How does that feel?’

  Leke didn't respond.

  When Leke was four Marcus had decided to teach him how to swim. Over a year and a half Leke became really good and for a short period he and Marcus nurtured a ritual of going out to Camps Bay beach and cavorting in the waves. They would swim out far, Marcus always close by, and He on their backs, floating.

  Leke loved the contrast between the sun on his face and the ice-cold water swallowing the rest of his body.

  Once, a large wave had come, unexpected, and grabbed and spun Leke so that he couldn't tell which direction the sky was in.

  Lying beneath the hellerworker's busy hands, Leke remembered that feeling of being nowhere, of hanging in water.

  Only the occasional brush of grit and stone as he spun in the cycle of the sudden wave had alerted Leke to the fact that somewhere there was something solid he could rest upon. A sense of calm took hold of him as he felt certain that the tumbling would end – the sting of salt in his eyes, the chaos – and when it did, something solid would be there.

  Thankful that they'd chosen to stay near the shore, Marcus had retrieved the dazed boy from the water and laid him on the beach.

  It was a memory that Leke had forgotten. It had only lasted a few seconds and he'd escaped the incident unhurt – just a couple of bruises where he'd scraped his knee against a rock but apart from that he was fine.

  Afterwards Marcus declined Leke's requests to take him to the beach. Leke had always dismissed that as Marcus being unfair and not really liking him but he'd been wrong.

  “Marcus loves you,” Jane had said. “He needs you.”

  Leke had spent much of his life ignoring those words after failing to reconcile them with the Marcus he knew.

  The hellerworker pressed into his shoulder. There was a hard bump she kept on going back to. Leke grunted. Maybe it's working.

  But Marcus had not been rejecting Leke's offerings of friendship. Marcus did love him. All this time and it had been something much simpler, much more common. The realisation was surprising – Marcus was scared of him.

  ‘Stop,’ Leke said.

  ‘Sorry, is that painful? Would you like me to work softer?’


  He rose from the bed.

  ‘You okay? Can you describe it, what you’re feeling Leke?’

  He swung his legs onto the ground and put on his clothes.

  ‘I don't understand. Are you–?’ She put a hand on his shoulder and he recoiled with a sharp jerk that startled her.

  ‘Are you alnght? Sometimes the first se–’

  ‘I need to go.’

  ‘But…wait let's finish the treatment.’

  ‘I cannot wait,’ Leke looked at her and left the room. Ruth stayed standing for a while in disbelief. When she went into the reception room to try and stop him he had already left.

  Friday 16th November 2012

  11.30 pm

  Leke stood waiting outside the apartment door. Was it the correct number? He hadn't thought to memorise it the first time. He'd rung the bell twice already. He pressed again on the black button and was stepping back when the door opened. She wore a pink robe over a chocolate brown slip that had a sheen to it and she was barefoot. The floor must have been cold, she curled her toes up and clasped her arms over her chest, rubbing and squeezing her shoulders.

  ‘What the hell do you want? It's after 11pm, Leke, for God's sake.’

  It had seemed so sensible when he'd thought of it but now, standing in front of her words, left him.

  She rolled her eyes and opened the door, Well, come in while you’re thinking of an answer, it's cold out there.’

  The apartment was as clean as before but Leke felt less embarrassed thinking of the bag of potpourri resting on his window ledge at home.

  ‘So, what do you want, Leke?’

  ‘I need your help.’

  Humour drained from her face and for a second Leke realised how she saw him. ‘I know this is strange. I'm sorry to come like this. I need your help with something.’

  ‘At this time of night? This couldn't wait till working hours? What's that?’