The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini Read Free Book Online Page A

It had clinked on the driveway, and I was surprised by that because
     Roxy usually had a poor lizard dangling from his teeth, which would only make a dull slapping sound when Roxy flung it on
     the stone slabs. I stooped down, picked up the object. It was wet with saliva and dirt. And then I ran water over it and I
     saw what it was.
    It had been months since the sentencing. He was in jail now. I chanted the old playground claim,
finders, keepers; losers, weepers,
over and over again, but the more I held the lighter in my hands the more it became what it was, evidence. And I had it.
    He came today.
    We all saw him.
    He stood outside the gate and looked up at the house.
    He stood there just looking.
    Mphiri came out and opened the gate.
    Maphosa said that there will never be peace now.
    Rosanna, who is pregnant, was quiet.
    Mummy said he looked like a criminal. I didn’t think that she was right about that.
    *    *    *
    He helped us push start the car. The Cortina stalled again at the gate. I got out of the car and saw him standing by his gate,
     looking. I felt shy to have my back turned from him, my head bent down, my bottom up, straining my weight against the car.
    “I’ll give you a hand,” he said.
    I hadn’t even heard him walking up.
    Our hands were side by side.
    The car finally started and I got inside. Daddy leaned his head out of the window and thanked him.
    “It’s nothing, Mr. Bishop. Glad to help.”
    In the car, Daddy looked at his windscreen mirror and sighed. I was thinking of his hands. I was thinking of the lighter in
     them. The lighter that said Rhodesian Army on it. Hot and burning.
    When I came home, I took out my diary, which was wedged in between the mattress and the headboard. I had bought it in March
     in Kingstons at half price with my pocket money. It had a picture of a ballerina on the cover and a lock and key. I found
     the date and put a big X in the space for writing. I counted; it was twenty-one days since he had been released. Then I locked
     it up again and put the key back in my pencil case. I wasn’t supposed to have any secrets from my parents.
    And then I took the lighter out from behind the mirror. I stood in the room trying to think of another place. I thought that
     maybe I would put it in my pink handbag, which was too childish for me now and which I kept hanging in the cupboard. I was
     opening the cupboard door when I heard Mummy’s footsteps, and I shoved it under my pillow.
    “Lindiwe,” Mummy says. “Our interaction with that boy must be kept to the strictest minimum. If he comes here when there are
     no adults around, you must not let him in. I have already informed Rosanna and Maphosa. Is that understood?”
    “Yes, Mummy, I understand.”
    Mummy is now treasurer of the Women’s Group. Monday and Wednesday afternoons she is away at meetings.
    Mphiri says that the young master is sleeping in the boy’s kaya with him. Mphiri scratches his head and says that this is
     not right. The young master sleeps right on the floor without even a mattress. He sleeps on the grass mat. Maphosa says that
     maybe now Mphiri will see reason and go back home. Even white people are afraid of Amadhlozi, the spirits who want to avenge
     a grave wrongdoing. Rosanna does not believe Mphiri. A white person would never do that. She cannot even imagine them using
     the same toilet as Mphiri. Mphiri is just getting too old. White people need electricity. She cannot even think of a white
     man sitting down to light a paraffin stove.
    As the days and weeks went by, things remained normal; everyone seemed to just accept his presence. Nobody made any comments
     about him, and nothing bad seemed to be happening to anyone. Maybe Mrs. McKenzie’s spirit wasn’t interested in doing anyone
     any harm. Maybe the heat had dried it up, sapped away all its energy (and anger), like it was doing to everything else.
    Every evening, Daddy was glued to the TV rain forecast report and the graphs on