The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini Read Free Book Online

arguing, and Mphiri started weeping against the fence, asking Maphosa to please
     forgive and understand him.
    Even though I was very hungry and dying for the crunchy peanut butter sandwiches I always have after practice, I stayed where
     I was. My grumbling stomach disturbed Roxy, but luckily when he struggled out of my arms, he ran off to the other side of
     the house. My face was wet with his spit.
    I saw Daddy come out of the workshop. He was holding a part he was fixing and he was obviously annoyed.
    “Maphosa, leave the old man alone,” he said.
    Daddy waited until Maphosa moved away from the fence.
    “Better in the bush,” Maphosa muttered.
    Mummy, who had come out of the house, heard him. “If that’s the case,” she said with her hands crossed, “feel free to go.
     The bush is waiting.”
    “No, no, Mama,” Maphosa said. “It is not like that. It is just that matters were simple there. Kill and be killed. One settler,
     one bullet. Now people are even angry that they are liberated and can make their own decisions. They are grumbling that the
     white man took care of them and now they are being left to fend for themselves.”
    He stood there looking at Mummy, and then he raised his hand and started rubbing his bad eye.
    I went inside the house and thought about Maphosa, how annoyed he is by the fact that white people have been given the vote.
    “We did not fight for one vote, one settler,” I had heard him argue with Rosanna.
    Daddy told me in private that this was not strictly true. White people got much more than one vote each: Lancaster House had
     awarded them twenty seats in parliament even though there were only about twenty-nine thousand registered voters in the white
     electoral roll. The over two million voters in the common electoral roll only got eighty seats. And whites could be registered
     as voters in both rolls.
    As far as Maphosa is concerned, all the leftovers should go back to Britain; there is no such thing as a white African.

10.
    Mphiri’s faith has
been rewarded. Over a year and a half has passed and Ian McKenzie is going to be released.
The Chronicle
says that the verdict has been quashed because of a successful appeal. New evidence was presented to the court concerning
     the validity of the confession.
    Maphosa and Rosanna argue about this, too. Rosanna says that definitely he will not be released because he is a murderer and
     he has killed a white woman; Maphosa says once again Rosanna reveals her unending ignorance: that boy will definitely be released
because
he is a murderer of a white woman. It will make white people feel very confused about the government and its intentions; they
     will not know which way the wind is blowing. “Let them start murdering each other,” says Maphosa. “Maybe then we can have
     our land at last.”
    Daddy says that prison can reform some people; it can make them realize the error of their ways so that they make amends.
    Mummy looks at him and says all she knows is that now we will have to live with a murderer in our midst and then she starts
     humming. This is Mummy’s way of telling Daddy “I told you so.” She has been urging him for a long time now to start looking
     for a new house in one of the better suburbs. A better suburb to Mummy is one where there are higher quality white people
     and no apostolics. She wants to move further north. But Daddy says that we can’t afford to move; the rates alone will kill
     us. Mummy doesn’t believe him and thinks that this is yet another example of Daddy’s tightness with money when it concerns
     her.
    After dinner I go to my room and slowly move the dressing table. I remove the lighter that I have taped to the back of the
     mirror. I sit down on my bed and look at it in my palm. I am breathing deeply, in and out, like when Dr. Esat asks me to as
     he moves the stethoscope around on my chest. I close my eyes, which makes me feel dizzy.
    Roxy found the lighter somewhere in the vegetable patch.