Bom Boy Read online

  Leke brought out the envelope, ‘Can I leave this here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I…I'll put this down here,’

  ‘What are you talking about? What is it?’

  ‘Letters.’

  ‘I don't understand you.’

  ‘I can't sleep. But I can't throw them away. I need one night's rest. I'll come back and get them in the morning.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘No, no. It's not that. I…they haunt me. I can't sleep, and when I sleep I have nightmares. If I leave them here I'll sleep better,’ he held it out to her.

  Tsotso stood still for a few seconds then moved forward to accept the offering. She examined the contents of the envelope. ‘What's in here? Letters?’

  Leke nodded.

  ‘Haunts, you say?’

  ‘Please. Just tonight. Tomorrow's Saturday, I'll come by first thing.’

  For the first time since she'd met him Tsotso studied Leke's face. His eyes were light brown and soft, they didn't scream “lunatic”. She checked for any signs of neglect in his bushy afro, nothing. Dirt under his fingernails though.

  ‘Letters from whom?’

  ‘I don't know. My first parents,’ he thought of himself as a second-hand car.

  ‘You’re adopted?’

  Leke nodded.

  You ever met them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And now they've sent you this?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Tsotso gave a loud sigh, ‘Just tonight then?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He didn't dream. He remembered studying the shape of the fridge in the dim light from the street lamp and then it was 11am.

  Leke waited for Tsotso in the parking lot, as they'd agreed.

  ‘Morning,’ she handed him the envelope.

  Leke opened it and pulled out the stash of papers. He glared at the pages, disappointed to find that the letters were still blurry.

  ‘Everything okay? Listen I got to collect my grandma from the clinic; I can't do crazy this morning,’ she opened the back seat of her car and placed her bag on the floor. She wore dark-blue skinny jeans and knee-high boots.

  ‘Will you read them to me?’ Leke asked, coming behind her as she prepared to get into the driver's seat.

  Saturday 17th November 2012

  Wednesday 22nd October 1992

  For Leke:

  Where did I leave off?

  Soon after my grandmother visited the babalawo and followed his instructions her belly grew and, on the day, when the doctor said to her, ‘Obinrin’, she wept and wept for days. My father joked that his sister was fed milk and tears for the first week of her life.

  Ayo was her name but the joy did not last. When she was three, the babalawo came to Mama Wole and Oga's house. In this dream I am my grandmother. I greet him. There is nothing to be afraid of until he explains his visit and then there is much.

  ‘You said at any cost,’ he reminded me.

  He wanted Ayo – that was the cost. I could have her for three years and he would have her for the rest, rear her as his own child with dignity and train her in his medicinal ways.

  I refused. The babalawo did not insist and he did not force me to give up the baby, instead he bowed and walked away.

  Three days later Ayo died in my arms. I ran to the babalawo's compound but he was gone. That was the beginning of the darkness.

  One by one my sons died, the sons their wives had borne and their wives too. No more girls were born into the family and I knew that no more will ever be born.

  A few years would pass between each death but it never abated. One quiet day, after burying four children, I took my own life and my husband followed me.

  I hate this nightmare. This one I wake up panting as if I have been running. My feet ache.

  Thursday 23rd October

  So that was the darkness. My grandparents made a deal with the babalawo (at any cost) and then they broke it. When you break a deal, especially with a babalawo, you pay. That was the darkness. This is it here, now. And wherever you are Leke when you read this – that's it there too.

  After my mother died I saved enough money and returned to Nigeria. I was a Nigerian, after all. I went home and stayed. It was a lonely place, Leke. I was following my father's instructions – the only way he could think of to keep me alive – which was to live alone and starve the curse of the lives it needed to feed on in order to thrive. My father was very clear, I was not to invite love because even the smallest spark would incite the curse into another spate of deaths.

  One day, after drinking too much, I stumbled into a babalawo's parlour. Why not? I thought. Why couldn't I reverse it and really live?

  I did not take her seriously at first. I completed my university degree, masters and PhD. I was, am, a well-learned man, Leke.

  I ignored the babalawo's instructions for how to reverse the curse and returned to Cape Town to teach. I only remembered the instructions when Elaine told me about Malcolm Feathers.

  ‘Find an evil man and kill him,’ the babalawo had chanted.

  What could I do? I had fallen in love and become greedy for life.

  My lawyer says the courts will struggle to prove that it was premeditated. But I did plan it. I started planning the day Elaine told me you were coming.

  I had fallen in love with her, gone against my father's warnings. I was bringing a child – I knew you would be a boy – into the world. Another life to suffer. I was prepared to do anything so that we could be a normal family. No darkness.

  Saturday 17th November 2012

  ‘Sjoe!’ Tsotso covered her yawn with her forearm. ‘I'm tired.’

  ‘Thank you for this.’

  ‘Ag, doesn't matter. I had nothing to do anyway.’

  ‘Where's your grandmother?’

  ‘She wasn't eating. I couldn't get her to eat, I've always been able to get her to eat. It got worse so they suggested I leave her in Frail Care for a few days. Observation.’

  ‘I'm sorry.’

  Tsotso nodded, wiping her eyes.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ he repeated, noticing her tears and shifting his weight on the seat.

  ‘I miss her.’

  Leke continued shifting in the seat, crossing his legs at the knees and uncrossing them. Tsotso, sitting opposite on the carpeted floor, put her head back against the couch behind her.

  ‘She raised me. She looks small now, hey, but she was athletic. She used to play table tennis my grandmother,’ Tsotso cackled and slapped the side of her thigh pulled up to her chest.

  Leke thought not to make a sound. He was afraid that if he did Tsotso would remember he was there and stop talking.

  ‘Her father had taught her to play and she taught me. We'd play on the kitchen table after dinner with pieces of wood cut from chairs and things. It was fun,’ she shook her head slowly. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I'm sorry.’

  ‘Stop saying that.’ Tsotso turned to face Leke. ‘You’re a fucking stuck record. “I'm sorry I'm sorry”. What's wrong with you? Can't you say anything else?’

  Pinned to his seat by her angry glare, Leke felt that his skin might start to fry. She released her gaze, turning back to face the silent TV and the window behind it with Cape Town spread below in a spray of lights. She sucked her teeth, alerting Leke to the fact that she wasn't done yet.

  ‘What? What is it? What's wrong with you that makes you so sorry? You’re sorry. You’re sorry?’ A new wave of anger propelled her to her feet, she walked to the window then turned again to look at Leke.

  ‘I hate that. Take your stinking pity and suck on it. I don't need your sorry. I thought I could just talk to you. I was just talking.’

  ‘I'm –’

  She took a step closer and Leke's words tapered. She felt the cool from an open window blow on her neck and her heart settle. Maybe she'd overreacted. She moved back to the couch and sat down in the same position, not looking at Leke. The silence was the discomfort of ha
ving expressed the intimacy of anger too soon. After more minutes passed Tsotso gave up wondering what to say.

  ‘I'm tired. Are you going home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I'm in the bed. There's a duvet over there for you on the couch.’

  Leke stood in the darkness of Tsotso's living-room, a light came under the door from the public passageway, and another blue light from a nearby nightclub poured, along with the repetitive thud of house music, through the window. The door to Tsotso's room was ajar, he pushed it open. She lay face up, her left hand hanging off the side, limp. He watched her chest as it rose and fell, her plump lips parting with the emission of each snore, an occasional bubble formed and popped.

  She moved and he stopped breathing for the time it took her to turn her head and resettle her body. Her snoring resumed; his breathing resumed. His eyes moved from her legs to her arms; he could see the soft pulse at her throat. Her feet stuck over the end of the bed, exposed from under the duvet. He wondered whether she felt the cold. When he bent down to put the fabric over her feet he noticed on her middle toe she wore a ring the colour of copper. Leke moved closer, hoping the ring would be easy to work off without waking her.

  The first time he'd ever taken something came back to him. He'd hidden the photograph of the strange woman. The one he'd found in Jane's cupboard. He kept on telling himself he'd find the right time to ask about it and then he realised that the longer he held on to it, the more impossible it was to give back.

  After Jane died he decided to never give it back, reasoning in a way he couldn't explain, that the photograph belonged to him. Like a gift Jane intended to give him but forgot to. It was like that when he took things – that's how he thought of it. Taking things.

  Jane had told him a story. There was once a giant creature called Babo, loved by all the land. One day Babo went against his parents’ wishes and ate of the blue root. With each slimy twig he swallowed, he shrunk in size. His parents worried, Babo was shrinking before their eyes, but nothing they said could prevent him from eating the twigs. Smaller and smaller and smaller he grew. Until Babo completely disappeared.

  This last bit she would say in almost a whisper. Then kiss his cheek and turn off the lights.

  ‘Am I Babo?’ Leke would ask the next morning at breakfast but Jane would laugh. ‘I wouldn't have kept on, mom! I would've stopped, I swear!’

  Leke studied the toe ring for a few more seconds then tucked Tsotso's feet under the blanket and snuck in beside her.

  ‘Did you spend the night here?’

  Leke wanted to look away but her eyes had the power to keep him pierced in place.

  Their faces were inches apart and he could feel her breath on his face. Warm and pungent, small specks of muck in the corners of her eyes from the night's sleep.

  He wanted to reach and touch her. He was still deciding which hand to use when she sighed, turned and reached for the stack of letters on the floor by the bed.

  ‘By the way,’ she started looking at the pages in front of her, ‘you can tell the people at work whatever you want. You can tell them that we’re friends.’

  She flipped through the remaining pages, as if assessing what they had already read through and checking to see what still lay ahead.

  ‘This curse stuff, you think any of it is true?’

  Leke shrugged.

  ‘And what exactly is the curse? What happens to you?’

  ‘Not just to me. But all the people around me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can't have a good life. I die, miserable. And everybody else close to me, they die too.’

  ‘Don't you think that's just life, though? Isn't that just how things are?’

  Leke didn't know.

  Friday 29th November 1991

  Elaine ignored Oscar for four weeks after the first time he tried to kiss her. Summer was fully formed and the sunshine set upon the campus, unrelenting and fierce. Evenings were still, and the ground radiated the warmth collected through the day, back into the atmosphere.

  8pm on Friday Oscar was still marking scripts at his desk, unwilling to go home to his empty house.

  Elaine knocked on his office door, uncertain he would be in but hopeful.

  ‘Yes.’

  She opened the door and stuck her head through. A flash of unexpected rain had caught her and she was dripping water onto the carpet.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asked, still standing at the door.

  She seemed shy although they'd spent many nights in his office, chatting until late. Oscar nodded a response and Elaine shut the door behind her. She put down the Shoprite bag which held a container of food for her supper. She leaned one hand on a bookshelf while with the other she bent down and removed her shoes. It was getting dark outside and the building was empty.

  ‘You’re all wet,’ Oscar said, noticing the tremble in his own voice.

  Elaine shrugged. After she removed her shoes she sat on the floor, facing Oscar who was still sitting on his chair. He swivelled it out from his desk so that they were facing each other with nothing in between them. She brought her knees up and removed her socks.

  ‘I'm sorry about the other day,’ Elaine said as she removed her cardigan. ‘You said you wanted to kiss me. I wasn't trying to…I was just…’

  ‘I didn't mean…’ Oscar began.

  He stood up and sat down again, unsure where to look. His tongue in his mouth felt like the trunk of the tree outside his office and his limbs were like its roots trapped under volumes of soil.

  She removed her vest and stood up so that she could step out of her corduroy trousers. The light in the room flickered. Elaine continued removing her clothes, one layer after the other. Oscar watched, intrigued, wondering what she was doing. When she was almost naked, in her bra and underwear, she walked towards him and took his hand.

  ‘This is all,’ she said. ‘I just wanted you to see me. All of me.’

  She guided his hand along her body.

  Half of Elaine was beautiful.

  ‘Look at me.’

  There were two halves of her. Half that was burnt. Half that was not. The burnt skin was calloused and glistened; uneven in parts, as though it had once bubbled and then frozen in place.

  ‘What happened?’ Oscar asked.

  Elaine shook her head.

  ‘Doesn't matter.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Not anymore. Give me your hand.’

  Oscar relinquished his right hand which she guided along her body, moving from one side to the other, hard tHckened burnt flesh to smooth pale freckled skin. Oscar pulled Elaine towards him, into the chair. He whispered into her ear, ‘You’re beautiful. All of you.’

  They lay down on the long couch in the corner of Oscar's office and fell asleep, covering their bodies with the couch throw. A few hours later when they woke up the sky was purple. Elaine locked the office door. Oscar kissed her neck and her breasts. She sat astride him and they made love.

  Wednesday 19th February 1992

  Oscar switched off his engine, his hands shook and he rubbed them together pretending to himself, despite the still evening, that he was cold and not scared. He brought both hands to his head and rubbed his palms back and forth over his no. 2 buzz cut. For a few seconds he enjoyed the spongy sensation of his scalp. He rolled up the windows, the moon was slow in rising and the lights in Norwood suburb were sparse.

  Feathers didn't believe in barricading himself, he had no dogs or guards Elaine had said. Oscar wondered whether the growing crime rate since Elaine had run away from here would have changed his philosophy.

  The houses in the neighbourhood either shouted luxury or whispered wealth in hushed tones behind velvety walls, grassy verges hissing and ticking with timed sprinklers. Number thirty-nine sat far back from a medium-high brick wall. There was no one in the streets and cricket noises chirped from the brush as Oscar shut his door and walked towards the house. The varnished wooden gate was left ajar, Oscar pushed it
open and walked into the compound.

  The entrance door was the width of two normal-sized doors with an elaborate brass hinge; it boasted an opulence that was a beacon for petty crime. Two soap-stone hippos sat on either side of the door, their mouths ajar. If you weren't looking you wouldn't notice, just when you thought you'd put your hand as far in as it could go you felt the cool touch of the key, exactly as Elaine had described. He'd wondered whether it would actually be there. None of what she'd told him about her life in this house seemed real or believable.

  He turned the door handle and it opened, no squeak of rusty hinges. Oscar stood in the doorway for a few seconds. He'd never met Malcolm Feathers, but Elaine spoke about him in a cold voice and she wouldn't look into his eyes as she spoke. Oscar calculated that Feathers would be in his mid-eighties by now, no longer a threat surely?

  He'd created his own image of him – a monster from Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Demons. Oscar imagined a sticky deposit on whatever Feathers touched; something oozed out of his pores, the same vapour that wafted off his tongue when he spoke and trailed behind him as he walked.

  Oscar thought of all the things that had happened in this house. He thought of the burns Feathers had inflicted on Elaine and the less visible scars her time with him had left on her – her panic if Oscar looked too long at her, the paranoid way she covered herself. Oscar sifted through his mind as he crossed the threshold, too late to rethink his plan.

  In the entrance hallway a chandelier with bulbous crystals hung low, they sparkled but gave off little light. The parquet flooring gleamed, leading further down a passageway into the rest of the house. There were steps to the side of the passageway going into the basement and a staircase leading upwards. Oscar heard something from the floor above and started climbing What was he doing? His mind was talking but his feet did what they wanted.

  On the landing he turned right and stood, frozen.

  It was clear to Oscar that the man standing in front of him was Malcolm Feathers – an overweight slow being. He was naked, just coming out of the shower, dripping water from his shaggy head of grey hair and a towel loose around his flabby waist, exposing part of his thigh and a shrivelled penis. This was the monster; his joints were swollen, ravaged by arthritis.