Masande Ntshanga - The Reactive

They should be burned, he repeats, before shifting on his crate. We aren’t wealthy, Nathi, but we aren’t prisoners, he says.

I dry my hands against my pants. It smells like a clothesline under my fingernails.

I know things can be worse, Bhut’ Vuyo says. In Khayelitsha? The toilets don’t have walls. This is a place a man’s wife must relieve herself. There, with men and children watching. He shakes his head and spits into the ground.

In town, Cissie once told us about an artist named Adrian Blackwell. He’d created a portable toilet with a one-way mirror and installed it on a pavement in Toronto and Ottawa. While the door of the cube was reflective on the outside, the person on the bowl could see out into the traffic. I guess Cissie would’ve called this the collective unconscious. Adrian Blackwell never gave any indication of having heard of Khayelitsha, but in his way, he’d recreated it. I doubt Bhut’ Vuyo would find any of this of interest, however, so I decide to terminate the thought.

I take a look around us instead.

Despite the temperament of our conversation, Du Noon is filled with warmth and sunshine today. It’s a Saturday, which means the routine is mild and the commute is halved. Taxis play loud house music as they wheel about, picking up passengers dressed in their best Saturday clothes. The women’s figures are fit snugly into white slim jeans and some of them have sprayed their weaves, making them gleam in the morning light. Their lips are painted red and sometimes hot pink, and a strong air of confidence radiates from them. They stroll towards a taxi if it doesn’t stop at their feet. One woman walks by wearing a pair of hoop earrings. Each circle glimmers in the sunlight.

I turn to Bhut’ Vuyo. I say, at least people are still alive, here.

I must sound bored or unconvinced, because Bhut’ Vuyo just laughs in response. The laugh itself sounds sparse and cold. I can’t trace humor in the eyes or enjoyment around the mouth. Thankfully, it passes quickly. He claps his hands together.

That’s not living, he says.

Then he looks at my face and smiles. My uncle pats the side of my leg. Tell me about your studies, he says. Tell me about life at the university. One day you’re going to change all of this, aren’t you? He lets out another laugh and his smile stays on his face for a long time. You and your whites, he says.

Sis’ Nosizi, Bhut’ Vuyo’s wife, is due to return to us in Du Noon on the Sunday, just a day after we finish up with the latrine, bringing the two younger children with her. In preparation for her arrival, we do what we can for the container. I put up more Daily Voice spreads on the walls, more shootings and tik dens, and replace the ones I wiped with and soaked in the pools of formaldehyde. For his part, Bhut’ Vuyo arrives back early from his work in Blouberg with two packs of beef shanks. He rips the plastic between his teeth and whistles as he rinses the meat in the water bucket. I cut a square of Holsum and watch it melt in the frying pan. The Primus stove is broken, parked outside by the crates, so we use a gas two-plate for our cooking. Bhut’ Vuyo busies himself with his specialty.

There is a reason I called you here, Nathi, he says to me.

I listen.

My wife, he says. You mustn’t be scared.

I nod. I’ve always known Sis’ Nosizi is a diviner. What she does for a living doesn’t intimidate me. I look forward to hearing her stories.

Then Bhut’ Vuyo changes his tone and licks his fingers. He whistles over the pan and reaches for the salt shaker. Pass me the stock, he tells me. You know nothing, my boy.

I pass it. We laugh and prepare just enough for us to eat.

When Sis’ Nosizi returns, she looks at me for a long time. Then she embraces me and tears find their way down both our necks.

My circumcision is discussed only once. We set a date for late December. It’s decided that I’ll go in with their eldest son, Luvuyo. He arrives in Du Noon a week early. I let him greet his parents and siblings for about an hour, and then we walk down to Magasela’s to buy a crate of quarts. We drink until we turn half-blind, and then we roar our way home. We’ll have a small ceremony, they’ve told us, and the next morning our hair is shaved off by our neighbor. Ta Kader lives in a blue container opposite Bhut’ Vuyo’s. He crosses the road with a bowl of water and a pack of Lion razor blades. Taking sips from a warm Black Label dumpy, he tells us jokes under the blinding sun.

We head out to Cape Town Station after that. Outside the bus terminal, Luvuyo and I prepare to board a coach heading to eMthatha. Bhut’ Vuyo has business in town, he tells us, looking out of place in front of the station’s modern blue signage. We had a moment to talk just before we left Du Noon. He asked me to pass his gratitude on to my family back home, and I said to him that I would. His family had worn too thin to carry Luvuyo through initiation, he explained, and I nodded to indicate my understanding of their circumstances.

Now I get ready to leave Cape Town. I think of my friends as Luvuyo and I board the beeping Intercape bus outside. I think about where Ruan and Cecelia could be on a day like today — a day in which I finally take my leave of this city. We never made it out to the Eastern Cape to grow khat in our idyll like we wanted to; but we still have many years left before the end of our paths. I board the bus before I get ensnared in the thought, finding an empty seat near the back. Then I shrug and wish the two of them the best.

There’s a young couple dozing under a blanket to my right. They have their hands buried between each other’s thighs and are breathing heavily. Luvuyo nudges me as he walks past and points at them with a grin. Naaiers, he says, sitting down in the seat behind me.

I grin. I guess I wish myself the best, too. I wish Luvuyo the same. Leaning back, I close my eyes before we start moving. The trip is fifteen hours long, they say, and our journey will push us across a thousand kilometers of our country. Luvuyo and I have been told everything we need to know. We’ll return from this journey as new men, they said.

We do. Three weeks later my family has a small celebration for us back home, in eMthatha, and after umgidi wethu, we make it back to Du Noon in early January. For a while, Luvuyo and I hang around the neighborhood, wearing our uniform and doing the rounds to meet with other guys who’ve just come out. It isn’t the way it used to be, everyone complains. You get men as young as fourteen, now, and they bring guns into the circles we open to greet one another, pressing amakrwala for buttons and brandy. We give it two weeks before we decide it isn’t worth the hassle, or maybe even the risk. I change out of my blazer and newsboy cap and wonder how much I could hawk them for.

Towards the end of the month Luvuyo takes a taxi out of Du Noon, but I decide to stick around for a while. I take Industrial when everyone’s out, and then I start walking the neighborhood on my own, asking around for anyone who might have work. In the end, I take a job at a spaza. It’s in a double container just around the corner from Bhut’ Vuyo’s, a place popular for pushing out cigarettes and five-rand airtime. It isn’t anything serious. It keeps my shoulders above water when we reach the end of the month. I split myself between the cleaning and the selling, and sometimes I’ll go behind the counter and take a look at my boss’s books; I’ll do a few numbers for her.

There’s a lot of kids who pass by the shop. Most of them get sent from home to buy bread, airtime, or bleach — household items for their overworked mothers. These laaities like to act smooth if you let them. They’ll bring a half-loaf down to a quarter and then burn the change on entjies and rolling paper. Sometimes I serve them and other times I don’t. It depends on the kind of day I’m having when I get on my shift. I serve their older brothers, too — guys who come from my block and the ones next to ours. They lope up to my container with a million-rand scheme burning out of their eyes, each with a plan to turn Du Noon on its head. They ask me for deodorant and cigarettes, mostly, and I slide them packets of free condoms too. My boss used to be a school teacher; she makes us do that if we have them around.