THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Crooked Cromwell and Crooked People
Written by Lovelorn Happy Khumalo
Residents of the Cromwell building were vulgar as the building, they walked with bent backs and sighed every time before they entered the building. The tilted label written ‘CROMWELL’ depressed them more; it reminded them of the dreams that made them walk away from their homelands, it reminded them of the harsh wind at the back of open vans; it whispered warnings about the city they were headed to but they ignored the warnings.
When they lay on cold floors, surrounded by strangers with brittle hearts which were broken by the city, the wind came back and whispered again but they took their dreams and used them to block away the wind’s warnings.
Their abandoned dreams swayed like the label, wanting to be chased after with naïve smiles and eager eyes but the owners of the dreams were chasing after a paper that didn’t want to be caught.
Lwazi would watch the scowling and dejected adults with disinterest, he’d count the days until they reached Friday. On Friday, the street would be abuzz with men cradling brown bottles like lovers, windows would quiver from the music busting from the cars, the fetid air smelled different; it bordered between sweet and sour as the women passed with fragrant perfumes, their sly hands pulling down skimpy dresses as they walked to their lovers’ places with tiny bags.
The people of Cromwell joined in on the Friday festivities with a shyness, as if too afraid for the world to see that the city had infected them with its uncouth ways.
Lwazi was amused by his father who never looked at the label apologetically, he gave it a fierce and determined glance as if telling the label that one of these days he’d leave and never look back at it. When Lwazi had seen what he eagerly waited to see, he’d go back to his tiny desk and listen to the shuffling on the other side of the door before his father opened the door.
“I’ll leave this place. I’ll get us out of here. I am better than this!” his father would say after closing the door with his foot.
Lwazi would hold his breath and hope that his mother would not snort at his father’s statements. He never reached number six when he counted under his breath, waiting for his mother’s snarky response.
She’d scoff before saying, “It’s been ten years ever since you said this is a temporary residency, you said we’d leave after you make enough money, where’s the money Mthunzi? Where is the money? All you ever do is make promises that you can’t keep. Making promises when you can’t even buy a piece of meat, when last did our teeth get rubbed by meat?
All I want is meat! Inyama, Mthunzi, inyama!”
A ferocious look would cover her eyes, the thought of not having meat angering her more.
“Stop dreaming and accept that you’re stuck, this is where it’ll end. What you came chasing after does not want to be caught so stop it. Give up!” she continued and pointed around the cramped room that served as a kitchen and a living room, the worn out studio couch was Lwazi’s bed by night.
His father’s lips would crease and his broad shoulders shook as he followed the movement of her hands, the mention of this room being his dying place pumped him with so much fear that soon turned into anger.
Lwazi leaned against the wall and tapped his fingers on the cluttered desk as he watched his father beat his mother, he’d impassively look at her writhing on the floor.
Being on the floor did not stop her from saying foul words.
“You foolish man! You use… useless man!”
The thin walls made it hard for him to not pry at the noises coming from his neighbors. He heard the ragged cries of a man and tiny whimpers of a woman.
“Leave her! Leave mama alone! Mama, mama, mama! Mama let’s go!” the voice he recognized as Mbali’s shouted.
Lwazi envied her will to fight and shout on behalf of her mother, he thought of his mother as an enabler of such abuse. If only she would keep quiet and let his father talk about his dreams to leave this raunchy place, he wouldn’t have to fight his demons through her.
The yelling, plummeting and weeping would go on until midnight, the building would rest in a few hours long sleep before everyone awoke and collected a part of themselves from the floor; their blood and tears.
Everything would return to the way it was-ignoring dreams and chasing paper with a face of a smug man.
Many Friday’s passed of his father glaring defiantly at the sign, his mother poking him, his neighbors whimpering, crying and shouting until another one came. Lwazi decided to excuse himself from the rowdiness of his home, he skipped down the steps wanting to escape the same noises that came from every door he passed.
Angry men with callous hands wanting to roughen their delicate wives, some other women like Lwazi’s mother were too tired of listening to the promises of their men that left their stomachs growling and other men scraped and scratched the flesh of their women’s thighs as they searched for their egos that had been stomped on by white men and all they could say was, ‘Yes baas, stomp on it, I do not need an ego.’
Lwazi reached the bottom of the staircase and looked around the deserted lobby, the out of service sign was attached to the elevator doors for as long as he could remember.
The sound of approaching footsteps made him turn around and look at the person. Mbali galloped down the stairs.
They both looked at each other impassively.
She said, “Let’s go.” And Lwazi shook his head, his hands digging into the pockets of his sweater as if he would retrieve something from them.
“What will you do here?” she questioned him while darting her eyes around the empty lobby that only had a counter.
He also looked around and thought of what he would do since he escaped from his home and did not wish to see his mother poking his father’s demons and dancing with them until his father got tired and wept like a child and his mother would lay his head on her bloodied bosom. Proud that she arose and wrestled demons on her own.
He decided to follow her out of the night and they were immediately greeted by noise from drunken people who tried to sing along to the loud music but ended slurring words of the lyrics, crying as they recalled past lovers and cursed love.
Lwazi hurried his pace as he tried to catch up with Mbali’s fast gait when they passed by a group of boys who were kicking and hurling obscene expressions at a man. The man was curled up in a fetal position.
“We’re running from violence, only to be met by it again,” she accompanied her statement with a dry chuckle.
Lwazi kept quiet and thought of his relief from not being stopped by the group of boys and possibly getting beaten up. Lord knows he was just a lanky boy who did not have the strength to fight off a group of savage boys.
The pair stopped next to a man who was grilling chicken feet and gizzards.
“Do you have money?”
Lwazi replied by shaking his head, Mbali sighed in disappointment and they’re walked away from the hunger inducing scent. Mbali looked back evilly.
When they reached the less rowdy end of the street, their feet began to drag and their steps became slow.
“I wish she was like your mother. I want her to fight back and curse him,” Mbali said lowly that Lwazi could have confused her voice with the whispering of the passing wind.
She took Lwazi’s silence as a go ahead to continue.
“Why does she lay there and allow him to beat her like a punching bag?” she asked, “She could scream for help, you know?”
“No-one would listen to her?” Lwazi finally talked.
“Hey, how sure are of that?”
“My mother used to scream for help but no-one would come, now she just lets it happen,” he said.
“Maybe she didn’t scream enough.”
“You know I listen to mama Nkosi’s pleas for help? I crank up the volume of the TV and hope someone assists her but no-one does.”
Lwazi was too ashamed to admit this so he looked at the humble lighting from the street pole, the image of the pole took him on a quick jog on memory lane.
When he was younger, he would look at the poles and his heart would thump painfully against his chest because they looked like they were swaying in the air, ready to crush his tiny and bony body- the thumping had dulled over the years but the fear remains.
“Why don’t you get up and help her?” Mbali asked after a minute long silence, making her neighbor retract from staring at the pole.
The question tickled Lwazi more than his father’s silent conversations with their building’s sign, the boy laughed, bent down and smacked his skinny and sharp knees that were poking out of his ripped jeans. The concept of ripped jeans worried his mother; if one wanted to walk around naked then they should do that instead of wearing torn clothes, she always thought to herself.
“You’re a funny person, did you know that?” he asked after recovering from the belly clenching laughter, “If you have not noticed, this is the city. Everyone is concerned with running away from the demons that chased them from their homelands, not other people’s problems, so tell me why would I go there when my own mother is facing the same problem and I can’t help her out?”
Right after Lwazi stopped talking, a gunshot sounded at distance, startling the two teenagers but they soon recovered as this was a norm like how Shaka Zulu was used to the sound of a spear penetrating flesh.
Mbali sighed and said, “Let’s go back.”
“Who do you think died? Do you think it might be someone you know?” Mbali questioned Lwazi.
The boy simply shrugged.
“Someone I might know? Maybe. They all know each other-humans, I mean. The person that just got shot at might be a stranger I bumped shoulders with on a train or the one who held my bag on a bus as I struggled with standing or the man my father shared a cigarette with. I don’t know but all I know is that we’ve all met before so I might know the person.”
Mbali took in his words or not, maybe she inhaled the delicious smell of meat as they passed the man selling chicken necks and gizzards.
“If we know each other so much then why do we hurt each?”
“It angers us to see people who look like us, if they look like us then that means that they’re as clueless as you are about what we’re doing here.”
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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3
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